Holiday Madness

It's now been two weeks since completing the NaNo for this year and I'm yet to revisit the story. I simply stopped after achieving my goal, even though it requires at least another 15-20K to finish.

I believe that I'm using the holiday madness season as an excuse not to get back to it again. We got the last batch of cards out today; the ones to points in North America. The cards to my family in Britain, Australia and New Zealand went out a week ago.

We also got the holiday Christmas tree up yesterday. Up, but yet to be decorated. It's one of those tall ones from Costco with about 1000 small lights wound within its branches. That would be different than the 'Thousand points of light' once mentioned by you-know-who (personally, I liked it better when Dana Carvey said it...).

Yeah, back to the writing thing...I've had a couple of short story ideas over the past couple of weeks and jotted down a few notes to gather dust in the idea file. As of the 24th, I'll be off for 11 days so I hope, between stuffing my face with turkey and chocolate, to get some writing done.

I'll leave off with a picture of the boy and the dog. Jet looks smart in his Christmas attire (I will note here that it was not my idea) although somewhat demonic with his glowing eyes. And Sean is almost cracking a smile. It's the photo that was attached to Ginny's annual Christmas letter. Again, this is just the photo, I wouldn't want to bore you all with the family schtuff.

On Writing and Korean Movies

I kind of figured that if nothing else, the title would catch Natalie's attention...

It's hard to believe that it's been almost a week since I last posted a blog. I guess that it's a combination of the push to stay on track with work and a certain amount of apathy towards writing since the NaNo ended 11 days ago. I have spent evenings either moving snow or watching episodes of Criminal Minds or CSI that were taped for me the past month.

I have also been reading Stephen King's 'On Writing' that was strongly recommended by some of you. I must say that I haven't been disappointed. He speaks with such honesty and candor that you can't help but think that it's directed right at you. His analogy of a writer honing their skills and keeping them handy as a carpenter keeps and maintains his toolbox in working order is bang on.

I really enjoy how he bluntly gets his point across with humour and a certain homey vulgarity. For example, this passage both made an important point and made me laugh...

Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you'll never use "emolument" when you mean "tip" and you'll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a shit.

I was flipping through the channels earlier this evening when I caught a bit of a couple of Canadian film reviewers talking about a movie that was released a couple of years ago. The movie is called 'The Host' (aka Gwoemul) and is a horror feature from South Korea. I looked it up at IMDB and at Rotten Tomatoes, where it had an impressive 92% approval rate. Sadly, it didn't get much play in North America and had only 2 million at the box office.

It's apparently a great mix of horror, drama and comedy and set records as South Korea's all-time box office leader. It is about a mutant creature living in the Han River that was apparently created by an intentional formaldehyde spill. The creature begins hunting humans along the banks of the river and abducts a young girl. The full plot can be found at the Wikipedia article here. I know that I'll be looking for this one at the video store soon.

The Height of Laziness

Whatever happened to the idea of people doing a bit of walking? I remember an ad campaign when I was a kid promoting walking and we should all 'walk a block' each day.

The thing that drives me absolutely crazy are the people who park at the curb in front of the supermarket so that they don't have to walk that extra 50 feet or so to their vehicles. They sort of ignore the 'No Parking' signs and the marked yellow crosswalk so that people pushing their carts out of the store have to run a gauntlet of vehicles. The parking issue becomes even more challenging with a couple inches of snow on the ground as even more cars are parked in the way and the carts are harder to push through the slush. This is not unique to the grocery store. The same can be found at the liquor store (next door to the grocery), in front of the banks and other locations about town.

I was picking up my son this afternoon in Bay Roberts, a small community about an hour drive from here and about 45 minutes from my parents, where he had been for a couple of days during a school break. The Tim Horton's donut shop (got them in your area yet? A chain started by, of course, a long deceased hockey player) has a drive through and the line was over 20 cars long. Using my advanced math skills, at a good pace they will serve one in 45 seconds therefore the last guy will take at least 15 minutes to get to the front. There was parking in front of the building, wouldn't it be faster to park, walk in, get your coffee and dognut and leave? The laziness that people demonstrate never ceases to amaze me and I bet that it's a global phenomenon (at least to the fat and lazy western world).

I'm not the most athletic guy, but I do appreciate the cardio benefits of a bit of walking. We have a 4 level split house, so the regular hiking of stairs helps a bit (until I fall one day and break a hip bone).

My sister sent me another video that shows how Stockholm is doing their bit to encourage people to get a bit of exercise by ignoring the escalator and using the stairs. I think that this is a great commercial, you have to look past the VW advertising, and demonstrates that a bit of imagination can make exercising fun and perhaps we can all get just a tiny bit healthier...my rant is now over. Get yourself a big old Boston Cream, or Danish, or whatever and watch the attached clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hISRlatcmX0

Morality Tale

My boss emailed this to me today. Not sure if there was an underlying message I was to get from it, but I thought that I would pass it on to you. Apologies if this has already made the Internet rounds and missed it, or am just living in a bubble...

MORAL LESSON FOR TODAY

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to every one's amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

*****

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.

Live simply and appreciate what you have.

Give more.

Expect less.

NOW ....... Enough of that crap.

The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him.
The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON:

When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you

Limping Across the Line

The month of November seems to have come and gone in a flash. Well...that NaNo business was a real treat (in a masochistic sort of way). I'm now going to have to retrain myself in being more concise.

That was a real learning experience for me. It is nice to know that when my back is against a wall (yes, that was a cliche) I can produce a novel length bit of fluffage. And I think my WPM count at typing improved.

I limped across the finish line, yesterday, with about 5 hours to spare. I'm pleased that it's done, but not really pleased with the story. While outlining the story in October, I had a page written up with a list of messages I wanted to convey. Very little of that was accomplished. I've decided that I had too many characters. Some where fleshed out very well, others I only scraped the surface of. I do realize that all of that can be added/altered during edits 1 thru 13...

The story is still in progress and probably needs another 10k words to bring it to an end. I want a break for a few days, but I fear if I delay too long I may never return to the seedy underbelly of Metropolis.

Many thanks to those of you who dropped by my blog during the month and endured my endless whining. I would have packed in the project the first week of November had it not been for those cool inspirational pep talks the NaNo people email to the participants. But, more importantly, the advice, the kind words and the frantic shaking of the pom poms by my Internet writing friends was the real reason I completed NaNo. Congratulations, also, to those of you who completed your novels and to those of you who didn't, but bust a gut trying (oops, my cliche is showing again).

The Light at the End of...

I won't bore you with any more of my NaNo whining.

The current numbers are 42,800 words with 2 days left. That leaves 3600 words for each of those days. My best day this month was 3260 words so the gauntlet has been thrown down.

Someone whose blog I read (see Townie Bastard on side panel. He lives in, and blogs from, Iqaluit int he Canadian territory of Nunavut) had a trailer for a new TV show being put out by the CBC in the new year. It's called 'Republic of Doyle' and is set here in St. John's, so if you're curious about the place check out the attached link to the YouTube trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnHV1WcqPP0

It's about a private investigator and all the shady dealings of his life and family. He seems to get beat up a lot, very reminiscent of the Rockford Files. Townie Bastard noted that it was amusing the amount of gunfire in the trailer. We don't get much of that here.

Thanksgiving...the Sequel

It's Thanksgiving Day for my American friends to the south and west of me. I'd like to send out a big 'Happy Thanksgiving' to you all. I hope that you dig into your turkey, or ham, or roast, or tofu substance with relish (and a bit of mustard, too). I hope that you have a great long week end and for my fellow NaNo-ites, I hope that the writing doesn't take you away from family for too long...or the other way around--Note that Canada celebrated Thanksgiving on the more 'NaNo friendly' October 12.

I am at 38,375 words (83 pages, single spaced) and am preparing for the big push to the finish over the week end.

Update

I'm sitting at 34,725 words at the moment and figure that I'll need about 2200 words a day until the end to get this done. I'm happy that I have booked Friday and Monday off work. Unfortunately Friday is earmarked (cool word) for Ginny and I to do our annual Christmas shopping spree. Hear that...it's the sound of me cheering with happiness. Luckily it's not the Thanksgiving weekend here, as it is for my US friends. Don't get me wrong. The Thanksgiving notion is excellent, it's just inconveniently placed in November for the Americans.

Newfoundland novelist Tina Chaulk (listed with other local authors on my sidebar) posted a video by Kristina Horner. A cute look at the NaNoWriMo dilemma. Or was it a conundrum...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhs-yodZJcw

I typed some real shite at 6:30 this morning in an effort to pad the word count. I shall attach an excerpt from that for your reading *cough* enjoyment. Please don't think any less of me...

Anatoly was even more dejected than the previous night. He left the radio station, having barely spoken to Big Ben Murphy. He caught the number 17 bus downtown, to work another four hour shift at the diner.

His shift went well, as the harbour seemed quiet tonight and there weren’t many sailors or longshoremen dropping in for their gourmet offerings. They had enough time for Donovan to show him how to make ‘Toad in the Hole’. They fried up some sausages and wrapped them in bacon strips and then poured on the mixture of flour, milk and eggs. They baked this in the oven and could cut it up into eight portions. They reworked some of the thick, brown gravy made earlier in the day for hot turkey sandwiches by scraping off the hardened skin and adding chopped onions to the mix.

Donovan noted that they used to eat this back in England. Except that it came in a Yorkshire Pudding format where the sausage stuck out of the muffin like a greasy, brown phallus. Miller wanted these added to the breakfast menu to try to bring in some new customers.

Donovan also showed Anatoly something his mother used to make for him when he was a boy. He called it the ‘Golden Eye’ and it was very simply a slice of bread fried in oil with an egg in a pan. All he had to do was cut a hole in the centre of the bread and drop the egg into it space and let them fry up together, flipping it once to cook the other side. He would have to make this for David at breakfast time one day.

They sat down at a booth and ate their creations, getting up occasionally to collect money at the cash register or to pour more coffee for customers.