Platform 327

The last weekend of the month is over, my NaNoWriMo novel is at just over 20,000 words and I don’t care. It’s no biggie. Although I didn’t make it to the finish line, I did learn a few things:

- Trying to write from a blank page with no kernel of an idea doesn’t work for me. I know some great writers work really well that way, but I just end up with a whole bunch of boring characters doing nothing.

- I should consider a hobby other than writing. Something that doesn’t involve sitting in front of a computer would be good, considering my working life is spent sitting in front of a computer and sitting in front of a computer just ain’t fun enough to do with my time off. I’m thinking of getting back into photography.

What also kinda sucks about NaNoWriMo this year is that I didn’t get to any of the social events. Not a one. I couldn’t make it out to the weekday events as they were all going on when I was working, and every weekend this month I was either busy or sick. Part of the whole point of signing up for NaNo was to get out and meet people. Maybe not doing that is part of why I just didn’t give a shit this year. The party to end the thing is next Saturday, and it’s only about a block away from my house. I might show up, seeing as it’ll be really easy to bail if I get bored.

Well, I managed to get to the 20,000 word mark now. Hope isn’t completely gone… there’s still one weekend left this month. I’ll keep on plugging away and see how far I get.

This month did kick my ass, though. I had figured out how to work NaNoWriMo into my work schedule, but I wasn’t planning on a bad back, a gout flare-up and a huge party for my dad to eat up as much time as was eaten. Ah, well.

And yeah, that’s pretty much all there is in the way of news. Things are boring. called my life “stable,” which I guess has some good to it. Still, a passionless existence tends to wear a person down after a while.

My dad’s 80th birthday party went down yesterday. 87 people showed up. Shit, I don’t even know 87 people. He thought he was just going for coffee and a couple of pieces of cake with my mom and some people from their church. Little did he know that my mom had been busy on the old telephone for the past month or so, rounding up folks from all over. It could have been closer to 100 people if some people hadn’t moved too far away in recent years, or if people who were planning to come over from Austria didn’t have a medical emergency in the family.

Damn, I’ll never get that many people out to a birthday part of mine. I even have trouble finding someone to take care of my cat for a couple of days.

Speaking of which, I don’t think things are working out with this cat. Living with a kitten in a bachelor apartment was not a good idea. Between her zipping around until 5 am and the 7 am jackhammering in the building, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in over a month. As much as I hate to do it, I’m going to try keeping her in the bathroom at night a few times a week, just so I can catch up on some zeds. Hopefully when she grows up, she’ll chill out a bit. Hopefully a lot.

Anyway, back to work in a city stuck with Miller for another 4 years.

This is an email I got regarding the upcoming Toronto elections. I’m to lazy to forward it to people, so I’ll just copy it here. Do with it what you will.

———————–

Toronto’s city election is on Monday!

Watch our sixty second video, “Why Vote?” here: http://www.whorunsthistown.to

And remember that you don’t have to vote for a “front runner!”. A
wise dude once said, “I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it
than vote for what I don’t want and get it”. The media tells you
there are three people running for Mayor. There are 38! And in your
local ward race, there are more candidates running than you think.
Many of them can’t afford lawn signs and flashy flyers. But they
might have great ideas about how to improve our city.

Take a few minutes to make an informed decision.

You can find out who’s running in your neighbourhood, what the issues
are, links to candidates websites and more. It’s all here:
http://www.whorunsthistown.to

Please forward this message to a few friends!

–
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
dave meslin, project coordinator
dave@whorunsthistown.to
(416) 654-8741
http://www.whorunsthistown.to

Got nothing done on the ol’ novel today. Too much other crap to do. Again, I say: “Piff.”

Tomorrow is my only day this week without chiropractic appointments, acupuncture, or any other stuff that needs to be done. Plenty of time to peck away at the keyboard. That’s one good thing about not having any cash: a lot of errands get put off legitimately.

I’m kinda not liking this novel so far, though. I went into it this year deliberately without any plans, plot outlines, character sketches or anything. Just went straight from blank page onwards. So far it has become little more than an exploration of my own pathetic urban singlehood; a bit of a downer. Maybe I’ll throw an alien invasion or lottery win into the story to shake it up a little bit.

And no, whoever you are, you can’t read it. When I get this verified at 50,000 words, it will be deleted from my hard drive and the hard drive strapped to a rocket and the rocket sent into the centre of the sun. That is, of course, unless the next 40,000 words turn out to be something absolutely brilliant.

… you want to take your honeymoon here.

The good news is… I got a raise! Four whole percent. Go me!

The better news is… it’s retroactive to January 1! The November 15 paycheque is gonna be a big one! Bye-bye one of the nasty credit cards!

The kinda bad news is… I’ve only got $9 to last me until November 15. The chiropractor took all my money, and all I got in exchange was the ability to walk again. Highway robbery, I say!

Oh, there’s also some apathetic news: I didn’t do anything on my NaNoWriMo novel today. But hey, I’m broke off my ass and the weekend’s coming up. Plenty of time to get caught up on my word count.

It’s only about half an hour until the madness starts. I know I’ve been mostly ignoring my duties as a Livejournal poster for the past little while, but now things are going to get worse. Although I won’t be posting much this month, that little graph will show you how I’m doing on my novel. For a more detailed view, you can view my progress report.

Until December…