Touch You Last

Until work calms the fuck down I’m eschewing epic entries in favour of these macro as-it-happens posts. This comes two days late, but congratulations to Jorge and Rebecca for their NaNoWriMo successes. Jorge finished his book about a week early and won himself a trip to sunny Cuba. He, Castro, and Elian Gonzalez are all tossing back Cuba Libres at the pool bar right about now, those bastards. Rebecca didn’t hit the 50,000 mark, but had her best year in three years (I think—correct me if I’m wrong on that one.) Rebecca also gets the Miss Congeniality award for always being positive and never once gnashing her teeth and cursing out the world. Nice job, folks.

Considered yourself warned that this entry will be entirely unfocused. Work has been insane; I feel like a whore on Valentine’s Day. December looks like better times, I think. My NaNoWriMo book has ground to a halt for the time being. I’ve written about three pages in the last two weeks. I will finish it, but it’s looking more like NaNoWri3Mo right now. To my innumerable faithful readers: all apologies. Saw my first Senators game a little while back, which is also the first NHL game I’d even been to. Sarah scored great seats as a birthday present for her Dad, so we were about two rows up from the ice beside the visitors’ bench. The Sens lost (against Carolina ), but it was still a hell of a lot of fun to be there. I’m not a hockey guy, or really a sports guy (or when it comes down to it, any kind of man) but I was totally into the game. I was overwhelmed for the first bit, but after the Sens scored their second goal, I fucking screamed out YEEEAAAH! Then I though, where the hell did ...

A few quick updates: Yes, I've neglected this blog. No, I haven't been writing much novel in the meantime. I've finally fixed my 101 in 1001 post, which was all kinds of frigged up for a while there. If you'd like to subscribe to the novel, send me an e-mail or leave me a comment and I'll ship it to chapter-by-chapter as I write it Entries to come: my trip to Halifax and four Wednesday movies (none of which will have been watched or written about on a Wednesday).

Okay, just a few quick things before I pass out. First, my new profile picture: I couldn't make this face again if I tried. I was playing around with our new camera and thought I'd set the timer. In case you hadn't figured--I thought wrong. So unflattering, yet so awesome. I'd also like to call attention to my sidebar. You'll notice the NaNoWriMo word count. If you're astute, you'll also figure out that I'll never make it at this rate, but let's just keep that between you and me for now. Lastly, as a result of th e contest my presence here might be unpredictable. I'll be around, but not in any reliable way. As an example, I'll be dropping the ball on the Wednesday movie thing tomorrow. It'll get there, but not tomorrow. Oh, and I guess there's one more thing: this contest licks big sweaty balls.

I’ve decided to do this damn contest (and Jorge is foolish enough to join me), but the idea of writing a horror novel is starting to terrify me. The concept seems easy. We all like to take big dumps on Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and their ilk, but the more I think about this the more I realize that they’re brilliant at what they do. All horror novels have about five potential hooks to be shaped around: ghosts, monsters, aliens, madness, and supernatural ability. But these writers go back to a very shallow well of material and make fairly original works each time. Right now, I don’t feel like I can do that. I’m not that creative a person, or not like I think I used to be. This was so much easier when you were a kid; there were no dumb ideas when you were in grade six English. You’re trapped on the playground by terrorists? So imaginative! KITT and the General Lee have a race around the world? A+! But at the wizened age of thirty, I tend to beat down any dumb or fantastic id...

So I’m thinking about NaNoWriMo , which is the ridiculous nickname of the National Novel Writing Month contest. While it seems an easy-breezy time compared to the 3-Day Novel , NaNoWriMo demands that you meet a word count of at least 50,000 (the 3-Day averages out to half that). Also, there’s no winner, or rather, everyone’s a winner!!! (assuming you finish.) I’d forgotten about this contest until I popped by Rebecca’s site . I’ll recycle here what I said there, which is that I’d love to have completed the challenge, but I’m not too shit-hot on the idea of actually writing six and a half pages every night for the next month. That’s not good times, so far as I remember. However, the 3-Day Novel, for better or worse, always got me back into fiction in a big way, which is a kickstart I need very badly right now. What do you think? Tell me what to do. And if you’ve got the yarbles, suffer with me.