Let's Point Those Claws of Yours in a Safer Direction...

 Word of the Day: Recalcitrant

It means "stubbornly disobedient."

No comment. :D - BUAHAHAHAH!!!!!

Hello to all! Here, have a cookie....

There, isn't life a little less dark now? Glad I could help!

Today... was a good day. Got some work done for the shop (you know... marketing!). Went into the shop late afternoon for an industry meeting that was a'happenin', at which my presence was requested. Good thing my presents weren't requested, cuz you can forget that! That's not a'happenin'! Those presents are mine!

My good pal Carey dropped by today, much slimmer than when I saw him last. He's down under 320 (from 364) in less than a month. He was so thin I almost didn't see him standing there! A stiff breeze would have blown him away! Speaking of a stiff breeze, crack a window, will ya?

Also, Paula has been updating her blog, and I didn't know it! The updates weren't showing up on my blogger dashboard! Great, now she thinks I've been avoiding her or something. Guilt guilt guilt! Hold on, I need a cookie...

Ah, much better... the guilt, like my hairline, is receding...

Hey, check this out... it's the wordcount chart on my NaNoWriMo stats page...

The grey is the daily target goal, the yellow is what I've written... gee, looks like *somebody* works best with rules, deadlines and well-established boundaries, eh! That little flatline on the tenth was when I focused on the map instead of writing....

You know what's also working well? Mini-outlines! I get a good mental picture of where my storylines are, then I hand-write 4 bullet points on a sheet of notebook paper detailing what I want to happen next in each storyline. I mean, exactly the next step. Then I refer to it when I write the next scenes. That may sound like a no-brainer, but I've never done that before. It helps me track the stories, with an eye toward how to weave them together. Anyway, I think that strategy will help tremendously with my first novel, the unfinished "The Master's Program", which, by the way, is stalled at about 80K words... I certainly plan on finishing this current fantasy story, but if this strategy proves useful in this regard, the whole exercise will have been worth it, since I can then revisit my first book and know how to proceed.

The odd thing about my first novel attempt is that I wrote myself to a certain point and then stalled, knowing how I wanted the book to end, but not how to bridge "where I am" with "where I want to go." If that makes sense. Plus, my plans included several areas where I was going to have to do some substantial research that was, frankly, proving to be boring. Except for the Battle of Okinawa scene at the end, which frightens me for another reason...

I have such respect for the men who fought and died in WW2, I rather desperately want to write the battle authentically, in a way that won't inadvertently insult the memory of those that fought, or the intelligence of those reading the book who happen to be veterans, and can smell a civilian-generated battle scene a mile away... I want people that read it to feel the ring of authenticity about the way things unfold. Anyway, that seems a tall order for me, but I know that the scene is important, both to the story and to me personally.

Whew! I need another cookie...

In fact, here, lemme split it with you.... too many cookies will give me gas. Actually, just about everything gives me gas... that reminds me, Paula used the word "flatulent" in one of her November blog posts. I smiled and thought, "I taught her that!"

I would post a video clip of a Texas man crashing his million-dollar Bugati Veyron into a lake for you all to gawk at, but the guy filming the car crash drops some rather loud profanity as he sees the crash happen. And I can't do that to you all... your pure brains would be defiled, and then you'd backslide, and your blood would be on my head. I'd have a millstone necktie waiting for me, which is ungood. Suffice it to say that there are only 15 of these super-high end sports cars in the US, and this guy had just picked it up from the dealership and was driving it home. Oops. He claimed a low-flying pelican distracted him, causing him to skid off the road, but I can't see a bird in the video anywhere....

Here, give him this cookie...

There, that will take the edge off of his pain, I'm sure.

OK, I'm done. Gonna go write like I have good sense. The cool thing is, every new scene I write becomes my favorite one I've written so far. Did I mention how much fun I'm having?

Until tomorrow, remember, experimentation on mutants... it's not unheard of, but I've never seen anything like this before...