Month: October 2009

National Novel Writing Month, revisited

Posted on by rudy

My original intention of writing War Gods for Nano was largely influenced by the fact that it was my newest and freshest idea, which also meant it my most undeveloped idea. My thinking was that since this would be my first real concentrated foray into writing anything substantive, and having only a month to do so, I didn’t want to waste one of my “good” stories for which I had bright hopes. Thus, War Gods would be my throwaway attempt, ready to be sacrificed to ignominy should my Nano month turn out less than good. War Gods would have been about tribes on an island, waging war, and praying to their respective gods, who seemingly omnipotent, have a weakness which may expose the tribes to their destruction.

Over dinner tonight, a friend of mine, having long been subjected to precis of my stories, might have convinced me to instead use another, more cherished story for the Nano. This is a complex story, but without a compelling title, which for the moment is sadly The Dreams Stuff is Made of or perhaps Dreams of Stuff. The story is no less than finding a doorway that lead out of our universe, and the discovery that our universe is a construct, but one that is flawed.

Three more days for me to decide, and then to start laying down the words for a novel.

The Marine Corp Marathon

Posted on by rudy

I provided support sherpa services to a friend running the Marine Corp Marathon over the weekend. I had run this marathon in 2003 on as part of my four marathon extravaganza that year, running four marathons in four consecutive weekends: Chicago, Baltimore, Marine Corp, and New York City.
The Marine Corp Marathon in 2003 was described to me as the best organized event and also known as The People’s Marathon. My experience was that the marathon was sufficiently managed and executed, neither extraordinarily better nor worse than any other marathons that I had run. The finisher medal as adequate, but I don’t recall getting a T-shirt in the runner’s packet, as is the practice of most other marathons.

The marathon this weekend past was again decently run, but there was a nice long sleeved shirt in the goody bag. V-22 Ospreys made fly-bys at the start line, and the official starter must have been a hasher because he called out “on-on, marathon” over the PA system just prior to the starting gun. The finisher’s medal was a big honking Eagle, Globe, Anchor hunk of metal, and all finishers also received a Marine Corp Marathon coin, admittedly not in as heavy a weight as a challenge coin.

This weekend eventually degenerated into us concluding that I must have run the Marine Corp Marathon during the sucky years, which has resolved me to return to running marathons. Right up front, I want to start my season with the Chicago marathon in 2010, and I definitely have the Marine Corp Marathon in my sights as well. Other possibilities are to sandwich in the Baltimore marathon, and/or the Wineglass Marathon in Corning, NY. Oorah!

National Novel Writing Month

Posted on by rudy

It’s been about a month since someone told me about the National Novel Writing Month, Nano for those in the know.

It’s alwaye been a dream of mine to be published, although through all these years while I keep coming up with idea after concept for books, short stories, and screen plays, I’ve never really put words to paper and written anything.

Nano has become, for me, the kick in the pants of having a hard deadline to write something. Anything. The goal of Nano is very simply to write a 50,000 word novel from scratch within the time span of one month. The primary aim of the campaign is quantity, not quality. Apparently the hard part is to generate the requisite amount of words. Rewrites to polish the opus can come later after the initial 50,000 words are done.

Instead of dusting off some of already thought-of ideas, I’ve inadvertently come up with a brand new idea for my novel. I originally wanted to title it Gods of War, but that name is already used for a video game. The backup title, and now the working title is War Gods.

So, let’s see how November works out for me on my road to published-dom.