2/3/2009 ... The Beginning of the End?

I can't believe it's already February, 2009. Seriously, where did January go? And why am I still signing dates with an "08"?

It's kind of funny remembering that ten years ago, we were all pretty sure we wouldn't make it to 1/1/00, and now we're a full 9 years past, and much closer to the next apocalypse, 12/21/2012. Personally, I think the date looks more binary than ominous, but I'm sure there are signs the apocalypse is near. For example ...

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse:

Who needs the Four Horsemen when we have kids roasting puppies?

1. Jerry Lewis To Receive a Humanitarian Award

Jerry Lewis is the ass who will be receiving this year's Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka: The Oscars). He's being recognized for the millions his telethon, Jerry's Kids, has raised for Muscular Dystrophy, but there are thousands of people with disabilities who consider Lewis to be far from "humanitarian".

Many disabled people are sick of being pitied, sick of being considered "half a person" (Lewis's words), and really, really sick of being viewed as "kids" who are incapable of doing anything but sitting on the sidelines with their hands out, begging for charity. Disabled people in America make up a marginalized minority who want rights and respect, not handouts.

There are protests scheduled for the days surrounding the Oscars - Feb 20th-22nd, and you can find out more information on why the disabled community is so vehemently opposed to the recipient of the 2009 award by visiting http://thetroublewithjerry.com/. It'll be interesting to see if the protesters receive any media coverage at all, as most media outlets are far more concerned with what celebrities are wearing rather than just how un-humanitarian the Academy's Humanitarian seems to be.

2. In a Failing Economy, the Big Shots Still Get Paid

President Obama has recently limited the amount of compensation/perks that executives at failing banks can accept until their bank has repaid the government loan ... but of course the disgusting part of it all is that he had to take action in the first place.

For bank execs, $500,000 a year is a big comedown

As a taxpayer struggling to get by on $25k in NYC in '08, these numbers seriously make me ill. On a (comparatively) modest salary of $1 million, exactly WHAT the hell are these guys doing that is worth $350+ an hour, compared with my pathetic $13/hour, when I am working my ass off as much as the next middle class person just trying to survive?

3. The Bad Girls Club

I keep catching this reality series in late night mini-marathons on the Oxygen channel, and it's becoming a bit of a guilty pleasure. Unlike guilty pleasure #1, America's Next Top Model, in which "beautiful" women compete for a modeling contract while proving that there's more to successful modeling than just a pretty face, there are no such lofty pursuits for the girls of the Bad Girls Club. The series is nothing more than an outlet for catty girls, more processed than attractive, to drink excessively, party hard, mack on guys, dress like skanks, and otherwise act like total bitches.

And I keep wanting more.

4. Steve Jobs' Failing Health

I'll admit that for several years I was an adament boycotter all things Apple (more on that later), destesting everything from iTunes' download limits to the insufferable Justin Long in the Mac Vs PC commercials (go PC!). I was pretty sure that Steve Jobs was the devil, using trendy technology to steal the souls of our nation's youth ... and then I got an iPhone and fell in love all over again. It's entirely possible that for the last four months my soul has been slowly seeping out through my iPhone earbuds, but with all the free Apps I've downloaded, it feels like a fair tradeoff.

Now that Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence from work and the Apple stock is down, things are not looking so peachy keen. Devil he may be, but I don't want Jobs to die anymore. He needs to hold on until the end - the end of Apple or the end of the world, whichever comes first. My chips are on the end of the world.

5. Kids Roasting Puppies

The post-apocalyptic world is bound to have rag-tag bands of survivors, mutated by radiation, and nomadically scavenging the earth to form new, primitive societies in the aftermath. Apparently, some young people thought to get practice in a few years early, as a UK kiddie gang was caught roasting puppies over a bonfire. Clearly, food will be scarce, and the post-apocalyptic future will call for the ritual sacrifice of adorable little furballs. Without pigs around, the kids needed to find a substitute head to impale on a stick.

6. Post #50

Though perhaps the most indisputable sign of the apocalypse is that I have written 50 blog posts in just over 14 months, with no sign of slowing down. In my free time, I've even begun working on my YA novel that has been languishing since NaNoWriMo 2007.

The end is near.

No Plot? No Problem!

As the end of August nears, a very important month looms in the distance. It is a month of tribulation, trials, and tears, where patience will be tested and carpel tunnel syndrome intensified. Thirty fitful, sleepless nights, and thirty bleary-eyed, exhaustive days.

It's not the holiday shopping that will ultimately do me in, it's the writing. And I'm looking forward to it.

Last November, I participated for the first time in the world-wide writing challenge National Novel Writing Month (affectionately abbreviated as NaNoWriMo). I met the NaNo goal of 50,000 words but didn't fully understand what I did - and didn't - do right until I ingested (figuratively, not literally) the book No Plot? No Problem! by NaNo creator Chris Baty.

So, Mistake #1 was buying the book from Amazon in mid-October. Turns out there's a rush on the NaNo books in the weeks immediately preceding the novel writing month, and the book ends up out of stock and on back order. No Plot? No Problem! finally made it to my door a month later, but by that point I was too deeply entrenched in writing a book to bother reading one.

Mistake #2 was assuming that stringing together 50,000 random, more-or-less coherent words in one Word document was enough to declare myself a NaNo winner. Turns out that shoddily written or not, your book is supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and that thing that comes after the middle and, like, wraps it all up.

Well, two out of three ain't bad for a first timer, I suppose. I'll do better this November, and I'll be sure to keep Baty's (paraphrased) advice in mind:

• A deadline is all you need to write a book, and the 30-day deadline, while obscene, is not a bad place to start. Inevitably, along with a deadline, a writing utensil of some kind comes in handy.

• If you can sucker them into it, include others in your writing adventures. If you can't find someone to write with you, find someone who cheer you on, bet against you, or ridicule you mercilessly if you fail. Apparently, all forms of encouragement are helpful.
  

• 50,000 words/ month = approximately 1,667 words/day or 1.158 words/minute. Doesn't sound so hard, right?

• Write ceaselessly in 15- or 20-minute blocks of time and then reward yourself with chocolates. Mmmm.

• Make a list of all the things you like reading in good books and make another list of all of the things you don't like reading in bad books. Try to include the first list in your novel while ceremoniously burning the second list. It's as simple as that.

• Week two is the most painful and demoralizing week when most NaNoers throw in the towel if they don't have the incentive of looming failure and disappointed significant others to spur them on. It gets easier after 30,000 words. Week four is where you're supposed to, like, plan out how you will wrap everything up in the last 5,000 words or so. Damnit.

With No Plot? to back me up (or to rip to shreds in the throes of a NaNo-inspired fit of madness), 2008 is going to be a winner! Like, for real this time.

As If Filmmaking Wasn't Already Frenzied Enough ...

Inspired by the success of NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month competition held every November since 1999, the Office of Letters and Light began a new writing challenge in June of 2007: Script Frenzy.

And what is Script Frenzy exactly? Well, if NaNoWriMo is a month-long challenge to burgeoning writers and old pros alike to write a 50,000-word novel, then Script Frenzy is - you guessed it - a month long challenge to write a script. Instead of 50,000 words, the goal is to write 100 pages of a script in one month (average of 3 1/2 pages per day). Since the debut year, Script Frenzy has undergone a few changes, including moving to the month of April (instead of June), and opening up the challenge to include the acceptance of the following:

• original feature-length screenplays
• stage plays
• adaptations of novels
• short film scripts
• graphic novel and comic book scripts
• radio dramas

I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in November 2007 (my first blog post was to commemorate the event), and it was an exhilarating, demanding, and ultimately rewarding experience. With an intense last day of writing 14,000 words, I "won" the challenge with 50,074 words. Crappy words, but words.

Immediately after NaNoWriMo, I had big plans to continue working on my novel (which I still believe has real potential), but my month-long break from redrafting has officially extended to a three month-long break ... and counting. Entering another writing challenge could be just the thing to rejuvenate the Writera-lobe of my brain, tucked away somewhere on the right site, possibly between the Temporal lobe and the Cerebellum. But do I, a recently graduated film student, have ANY ideas for a feature-length script - of ANY kind?

Absolutely not-a-one.

Alas. Perhaps I will look into this "adaptations of novels" scripting option. Or write a one-woman show. Or just make it up as I go along. As long as I win!

If the writer's strike had lasted a bit longer, all those out-of-work creative types would have had plenty of time to indulge in a bit of expeditious writing practices. Do they mourn the missed opportunity or will they be frenzying in their off-hours anyway?

50,074 - Life After NaNo

In November 2007, I participated in a little writing challenge called NaNoWriMo (an awkward acronym for National Novel Writing Month), in which participants are challenged to write a novel ... in a month. Granted, the challenge is really just to write 50,000 words in 30 days - a rather short novel - which you don't even have to finish. And it doesn't have to be any good.

You just have to write it.

And write I did. At first I did my best to stick with the recommended 1,667 words a day, but by, oh, November 3rd, I was already losing it. Some days I'd come home exhausted from work and find contentment watching prepackaged plot twists and quirky characters on TV (Heroes and Pushing Daisies), rather than trying to write my own. Other days I'd be at a loss, so agonized over what to write next, that I just avoided sitting down in front of the computer at all. Ultimately it was the thrill of knowing that at that very moment, 100,000 other people felt a similar sense of overwhelming despair - and the desire to kick their asses - that kept me going.

Still, when November 30th rolled around, I had a mere 36,000 words written - 14,000 words short of my goal. For eight hours that evening, I sat in front of my computer and I typed, and I typed. And I typed. My hands shook from the effort. My body tensed, shoulders rounded, legs twitching. My eyes lost the ability to focus on the LCD monitor. Blindly, I continued to punch keys at random. My characters didn't know what the hell they were doing, but I kept writing, with every 1,000 word mark a mini victory. And with 5 minutes to validate the word count and 10 minutes to spare, I won NaNo.


The point of NaNo is not to write a Pulitzer winning novel in record time, nor is it likely that the printed manuscript will be worthy of anything more than leveling a lopsided desk. The point is just to write, even if it's crap. The point is to get in the habit of writing daily, something even great authors seem to have trouble with - or something that they claim to have trouble with - really, who can trust a fiction writer?.

Along with being able to smugly announce on December 1st that you have written a novel (never mind that it sucks), you get bonus points if the act of writing becomes a liberating experience and the drive to write a lot - fast - overpowers your obsession with editing as you go. The true serial novel killer is that damn OCD obsession we all seem to have as we struggle to find the perfect words and the perfect plot twists and the perfect character revelations, resulting in the closest thing we could get to the perfect novel, which looks suspiciously like a blank Word document.

You are a real winner when you hit the 50,000 word mark, Zen-ing out while writing those last 14,000 words, freeing your mind and your fingers to feel out the story together, to hell with perfect anythings.

So what is Life After NaNo? I'm not sure, as it's only a week later and my hands are still shaking, although the doctors are saying my hunched shoulders and new-found nearsightedness should clear up eventually. Will I ever finish writing my novel? Are my writing habits fundamentally changed, the OCD beast slain at last? Who knows?

Will I be participating in NaNo 2008? Hell, yeah!