The above quoted passage is from Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass. In it he talks about democracy’s violent heart. Before reading this passage, I never really gave thought to democracy and elections symbolism. Decisions that had once been made by battle, now decided by the people. We count votes to determine winners and losers and not bodies. Battles won and lost by the opinion of the public and not strength of arms.
Cheers on this 4th of July, james
Nov. 1st marks the kick off to a 30 day race to write 50k words in your very own novel. Several hundred thousands, if not a couple millon folks are coming along with you for this journey. 50k words seems like a whole lot and they are, until you realize most of your favorite books are more than 50k.
However, when you break those 50k words up over 30 days. You wind up with a more manageable 1,750. I rounded cause 1,667 is not a nice round number. And if you do write 1,750 a day for 30 days you will have written 52,500 words. There by winning NaNoWriMo and holding in your hot little hand the beginnings of your novel.
A lot of “serious” writers don’t look fondly on NaNo, due to the highly unorthodox method. Writing so fast so you can out write your inner editor and inner critic and just get the story down. Naturally a first draft of anything isn’t very pretty. Ernest Hemingway, himself said that. And if he thought his first drafts stunk…
There are a few brave souls that will publish or have their project printed just to have a physical book they wrote. Some folks will go on and edit, rewrite, and polish that rough hunk of coal until they get their diamond. Some folks will say, “whew that was fun.” And never think anymore about it. Those are all perfectly fine methods, your words, your rules.
The main goal of NaNo is to give yourself permission to write crappy. The deadline is to keep you moving instead of getting hung up on editing and polishing. That comes after you have finished writing your first draft. Think of the first draft as a frame work. The editing and rewriting is fleshing out the frame.
I wish you all the best luck on this journey of writing and discovering the stories you have within yourself. Cheers, james
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