The goal line has been crossed. I’ve hit the 50,000 word count, which qualifies me as an official NaNoWriMo winner. I still have two more days of writing. I’m going to try and crank out as many words as possible, and tack on a wrap up to the story.
The next post will be a NaNoWriMo perspective. I’ll be answering some questions I have for myself about the whole ordeal. Right now, I’m going to take a well-deserved break.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. regular posts resume on Friday.
Five thousand words left. I’ve got well over five days to do it. I’m headed to a write-in tomorrow morning, and I’ll have a couple hours in between to write as well. It’s not a victory yet, but there’s still a lot of story to tell, and I have plenty of ideas. Long story short; I should have no trouble finishing the 50,000 words the NaNoWriMo challenge has put me up to. For that, I’m going to give myself a pat on the the back.
I’m also going to take the rest of the day off. It’s Kat’s birthday, and I’ve got a few hours alone before she’s back. We’ll be making sushi and taking it easy. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy a nice, refreshing adult beverage, and maybe play a game or two.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. Can’t wait to get my hands on a full blown copy of Scrivener!
HA! Well, my crappy novel is at the climax right now, which I’m going to tell you right now is quite the joy to write. They say you need a beginning, middle, and an end to a story. What I’m finding out is you need a beginning, a teetering cliff, and a crashing conclusion. There’s going to be a wrap-up chapter, certainly, but right now the main focus is getting some resolution to some of the open strings I have laying about.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed by sitting down to write for at least an hour every night is this; I’ve gotten a lot better at typing. Kat’s grabbing me a nicer keyboard for Christmas, so hopefully I’ll be clacking away at a mechanical keyboard in 2017. Let’s see if I can boost up the ol’ words-per-minute.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton.
p.s. It’s one of those new fangled mechanical keyboards. It has LEDs in the board and plays dubstep when you turn on the numlock key.
I’m sitting at 38,000 words, with nine and a half days left. This week is the last full week of the month, and I can taste the end approaching. It tastes like a poorly thought-out, quickly written story, with gaps and missing characters and so much required polish it makes me wonder if I should even bother finishing the novel.
It’s better to have a shitty novel than no novel at all. At least I will have something to edit, to change, to spruce up a bit before I have someone else look over it. I’ll finish the book this year. I will make it readable the next.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. Thankfully, I haven’t had writer’s block yet. I just have periods of writing garbage.
Halfway through the month, and I’m over halfway through the word count. I’m hoping to keep the pace up and finish strong. So far, it hasn’t been as challenging as I thought it would be, but I’m also lucky to have a lot of free time on my hands, as well as a lack of children. I should have no issue finishing up on time.
That being said, even though I’m almost thirty thousand words in, it still feels like I’m starting out. The story is slow, and there hasn’t been a lot of action yet. I’m trying to limit the dialogue, but it seems at least a few scenes are people simply sitting down and talking. Once I’m done the first draft, I’ll go back and start sprucing the place up with furniture, if you get what I’m throwing down.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. To anyone who’s new to the blog. All kinds of apologies. Once this month is over, It’ll be back to interesting topics, I swear.
p.s.s. I feel bad for anyone who has to read this shit.
Here’s the deal. I’ve written, easily, over two thousand words regarding this subject. And every time I’ve gotten to about five hundred or so words, I’ve straight up deleted everything that was there. All of it, gone. Countless hours trying to express how I felt about the election. The highest position held in civics, the president of the United States, is now held by Donald J. Trump, someone with absolutely zero experience in civics.
The first couple of posts I deleted was some sort of virtual hug garbage, letting everyone know everybody is still going to be fighting the good fight, this isn’t over, blah blah blah. Some of the other posts I wrote were a deconstruction of what went wrong with Hillary’s campaign because somehow hindsight makes Mr. Charlton a political science genius. All of what I what I wrote previously was obnoxious and/or had already been said.
To the people who were rooting for Trump; I hope your candidate succeeds in the next four years. I earnestly mean that. I can’t vote for the man, being Canadian and all, if I had the chance, though, I certainly wouldn’t have. Democracy doesn’t care about my opinion, and America voted for Trump. As he is now the leader of the world’s superpower, I hope he follows through and makes America and the world a better place.
To the people who were rooting for Clinton; I’m sorry she lost. I wanted her to win too, but to be honest, I was still angry at the Democratic party for nominating her above Bernie Sanders. If I were to have voted for Hillary, it wouldn’t have been because I thought she was a great candidate, it was because I thought Trump would be worse. A lot of people felt the same way I did, and being the lesser of two evils is unfortunately not a solid platform to campaign on. You have to remember, Trump’s campaign was a grass roots campaign. The facts show that regular people were backing Trump’s campaign, while most of Clinton’s support came from corporate sponsors and a lot of media that worked to promote her.
Will Trump do a good job at running the country? I’ll be frank with my opinion; Probably not. He’s released his first hundred days in office, a list of some of the things he hopes to accomplish when he first arrives in office. The problem is a number of items on this list put him at odds with much of the established government in place. Being the president isn’t like being the CEO. And now that he’s in place, all the people who campaigned for him are headed home. Their job is over. For Trump, his job is beginning. The house, the senate, and the presidency might belong to the Republicans, but if the last year is any indication, then there’s a lot of internal bleeding that will take time to heal, and four years isn’t that long.
People have confused a few things about the government, democratically elected governments, at least. You see, if you live in a democratic nation, like the United Stated or Canada, then you are the government. Yes, you, sitting at your keyboard and stuffing cheetos into your gob, you’re part of the government. Unfortunately, people have forgotten that. Not only have they forgotten that, they’ve forgotten voting is literally the smallest contribution you can make to your own government. If we’re having an issue getting people out to vote in the first place, then how likely are they going to have any further involvement in their government? Out government isn’t made up of lizard men, it’s made up of people like you and me.
We pat ourselves on the backs for voting. “I did my civic duty!” It’s the bare minimum of your civic duty. Today also happens to be Rememberance day here in Canada, the day when we honor our veterans. It’s always weird to me that so many of us will pick up a weapon to fight for what we have, yet so few of us would take the time out of our lives to make even the smallest sacrifice. I’ve heard too many keyboard warriors proudly state they’d be the first in line if someone invaded out home and native land, and then proudly state they didn’t vote because they had better things to do.
I’m no different. I’m not pointing my finger at you, I’m pointing it at me. Seeing captain pussy-grab take hold of America awoke something in me, a fire that screams “Goddamnit, Mr. Charlton! You are handsome, charismatic, and pretty smart. Why aren’t you running the show?” I might have to start small, work my way up. But if Donald Trump can become president of the United States, then I can surely become the mayor of a small hamlet somewhere.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. The hamlet vision I have in my head is a lot more like a sitcom than politics. “Mr. Charlton, we need to see you immediately! There’s a problem at the Chili Cook-Off!” The episode would end up with me, drenched in delicious chili.
p.s.s. I’m hoping it’s not spicy chili. I got super hot sauce on my bathing suit area once. It was as terrible as it was hilarious.
p.s.s.s. I will now resume writing my shitty book. I will see you at the end of the month.
It has been a week today, since the national novel writing month began, and I’m still on track to finish fifty thousand words by the end of the month. That’s the good news. The bad news is I took a break today, and haven’t actually written a word until this moment. Hear me out.
You see, for the last month or so, I haven’t actually had a real day off. Even when I didn’t have a shift scheduled, I still had some sort of obligation that had to be met. Which is fine, that’s life. But today marked the first day in a while where I could just hang out and not do anything. So, me and Kat did some shopping, I got some jeans, we ate some roast duck at a place, and kicked back later and watched a movie.
The point I’m trying to make is this; There’s a lot of pressure western society places on achievements and accomplishments. And these things are wonderful. But you gotta look after yourself too, and take a break every now and again. You can only keep a fire burning so hot until you run out of fuel. It doesn’t hurt to take a day or two and refuel a little.
That being said, I still have 45 minutes to write, and I’m sure I can crank out a few more words tonight!
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. I also made Zucchini bread today. It was fluffy as all sin.
It’s been four days into the contest so far, and I’m a little ahead of the game. Although it’s been going smoothly so far, each say has been getting a little tougher and tougher. Certain questions keep popping up in my mind. Here’s one of the big ones that has been rattling around in the noggin.
Has anyone explained to the other members of this national novel writing month group that 50,000 words isn’t really a novel? I mean, it’s not an adult novel, and even if young adult literature is popular is that what everybody is writing?
Yes, from the people I talk to, everyone seems to be doing young adult, typically referred to as YA. Which is fine, I guess. After Harry Potter success, I can guess people are after that sweet teet of children’s fantasy.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. Ok, that last sentence came out wrong.
So I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, which is the clever abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month. The goal, which is listed on nanowrimo.org, is to write a 50,000 word novel in the span of a month. A particularly lofty goal for many people. This year Mr. Charlton has decided to participate. As a result, I won’t be hitting my usual 750-1000 word article which graces the internet thrice a week. If I’m going to be running a word count, it should very well be towards the project I’m working on.
With that said, I’m still going to be posting here, thrice weekly, although it’s going to be a lot briefer than usual. Expect to see anywhere from 100-200 words put down on the intertubes. As it stands, I’ve hit about 3,500 words. It’s only day two, and to be honest, I haven’t written much today, until now.
I’ll keep you posted.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. See, this is 150 words that could have gone to getting me a deal on software. I’ll explain later.
There’s a lot of hullabaloo on Facebook right now concerning the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project being pushed forward by Energy Transfer Partners, a company out of Texas. A lot of people have been supporting the protesters by checking in electronically at the Standing Rock Reservation. There’s also a lot of people who’ve been vocal supporters of the pipeline, saying it doesn’t even cross their reservation.
A screenshot touched up with MS Paint. Seems legit.
The people at Standing Rock Reservation have legitimate concerns. The pipeline crosses only half a mile from the reservation, and a spill could have a negative impact on their drinking water.
The biggest problem with the pipeline isn’t the fact that it’s a pipeline. Overall, pipelines are far safer and more effective than other methods of transportation, like trucks and train. The huge issue with the Dakota Pipeline is how they went about getting permits for the project. They used the Permit 12 process, which treats the pipeline as a bunch of small construction sites instead of the pipeline it is. Small construction projects are exempt from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act. This is a major problem, as the project would have to stay under the radar, avoiding attention in order to escape review. The moment the people at Standing Rock voiced their concerns should have been the exact moment the Energy Transfer Partners should have tipped their hats, bid them good day, and started looking for a better spot to build a pipeline.
Did they do that? No, of course not. They brought out the tear gas, the dogs, got dressed like they were going to war. Which, hey, totally would have worked in the years prior to having everyone a high definition camera in their pockets at all times. Thanks to social media, something that would have been swept under the rug is now gaining the attention of some prominent folks. Bernie Sanders, currently one the most popular politicians in America right now, has writen a letter to Obama, hoping to sway the President to veto the pipeline the same way he did with the
I’ve worked in Oil and Gas. I have a lot of friends who work in Oil and Gas, shit, I’ve been living in Alberta for over a decade and a half. A lot of people have been affected here with the drop in gas prices. The hard truth is, though, if a community feels that a project could have a negative impact on their lives, especially when it comes to their drinking water, they have absolutely every right to vocally protest and do everything in their power to prevent the construction of the project. And for fuck sakes, do the proper environmental reviews the law requires. We have these laws in place for a reason. The reason being companies don’t give a shit about people, the environment, or the future. Not because they’re full of monsters, but because companies are legally bond to make as much money for shareholders as possible. If the cheapest way to get crude oil for one spot to another was to dump it straight into a river and pick it up downstream, they would exactly that.
Not everyone is against having a pipeline on their property. We live in the goddamn information age. Why isn’t there a database of people who’d love to make some extra scratch by having a pipeline on their land? See who’s cool with hosting an oil link, map it out, and built the pipeline there. Don’t bully a bunch of people on a goddamn reserve. With some of the shit being said, I’m surprised the Morton County Sheriffs aren’t gathering smallpox encrusted blankets.
Sincerely,
The Illustrious Mr. Charlton
p.s. Oil and Gas people, you’re not the ‘little guy’ in these equations. Stop acting like a bunch of whiny idiots every time someone doesn’t want a pipeline in their area. Every body is entitled to NIMBY.
From the Desk of the Illustrious Mr. Charlton 