A Separate Peace

I've been reading John Knowles a Separate Peace lately and I've found out several lessons.

1. Don't let your reader distract you, come back to the main point.
2. It's ok to summarize. That is helpful to your reader who isn't paying attention anyway and is probably drooling over the book anyway.
3. Don't be congineal and friendly, you get pushed out of trees.

That last one take with a grain of salt, I just noticed what the book was really about. And we want people reading it! Sometimes.

Well, I didn't finish NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month for skipping a couple days this past week, but I've been keeping it going with NaNoWriMo. It's getting difficult to not just finish it, in the beginning of the novel. I feel I have less and less to write about, but my characters keep living and functioning and most of all doing things. So I keep writing.

So amazingly bad.

It's odd how I read a bad book and I can put it down right away. But a bad story I'm writing...because it's nano I have to keep writing. I can't just put it away and say to everyone "let's never speak of this again." Although that might happen once this is over, but it's like a baby, I take it out once a day and coo over it and feed it, and it grows, regardless of how actually ugly this baby is. And it's ugly, no transitions from scene to scene, random conversations that don't really contribute to the plot...you name it, I've got it. Want to read it yet?

The no plot, no problem is actually kind of an issue

So I'm writing and I have no clue what comes next. It's like I am writing on the edge of the abyss, not knowing which words come next...and no, not the abyss in the Bible from whence come the dragon. More like the edge upon the abyss of reality. Which is scary place to be for me. But it that's how I write: so be it.

Sort of licensing writing above any other project I have going on is probably not the best idea. So I need to set down some ground rules for NaNoWriMo.

Writing does not come before sleeping, eating, or any member of the family, including the cat. In fact, those are my ground rules.

Oh yeah, if I turn insane over this horrible piece of writing, everyone must say that I "went insane for my work." Thank you. That is all.

Also, I find this highly amusing. Notice the white kid on the right. I know one kid who's parents will be voting for McCain.

Today was rough

I spent all my time up til midnight fidgeting away on the internet, all unknowing of the task I would have to undertake. I think many writers must write naked for that is what we must do of soul, strip ourselves down to the bare bones and build ourselves up again. It wouldn't do any good to try to write dramas with our clothes, on, they wouldn't be true to life, to our birth. Where we came from the womb immediately put in a fuzzy blanket to comfort us. While when someone reads they want to take off that blanket and face the world as it really is, passionately fancy-free.