Mission Accomplished

Well, I did it. Yes, ma'am. I wrote 50,000 words of a novel entitled "Anchor Them" in one month. I took the National Novel Writing Month challenge and came up a winner. You know what lesson I garnered from the whole experience? What gem of knowledge was left behind in its wake? What deep insight I learned about myself and my place in the world?... Well here it is...

I don't like writing novels.

There you go folks. I've always pondered in my mind what it would be like to be a famous novelist. To hole up in a cabin by a lake somewhere and pen my memoir. Or rent a villa in Tuscany to hash through my latest best seller. But now I know. It's not for me. I'm a screenwriter at heart. I like to write telling dialogue and to tell a whole universe in one frame. I don't like to bother with in depth description. Bo-ring. Grab the heart of the matter, the soul of your character, the core of your message, throw it up on screen in the most concise way possible and relish in the fact that you did it all in 120 pages.

Thoroughly-good For Your Soul

In Spin Class today I was pleasantly surprised by the sub's awesome and eclectic taste in music, especially her choice of George Thorogood's "Who Do You Love?" What I love about that man and his lyrics is the real sense he instills of the Wild West - freedom, adventure, savage love, all the vices you can handle. I also appreciate his taste for the macabre, something I, myself, am trying to achieve in this National Novel Writing Month challenge - that colorful mixture of life and love and grit and madness and morbidity. In his lyrics you feel death looming around the corner, making his lyrics and you feel ever the more alive. (Kind of like my favorite television show "True Blood", really...) So below I've offered up this tune in all its lyrical glory. Enjoy it if you know what's 'good' for you.

George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Who Do You Love?

I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's a-made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's a-made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me baby, and tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Around the town I use a rattlesnake whip, take it easy baby don't you give me no lip
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

I've got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind, I'm just twenty-two and I don't mind dying
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Now Arlene took a-me by my hand, she said "Lonesome George you don't understand,
who do you love?"
The night were dark and the sky were blue, down the alleyway a house wagon flew
Hit a bump and somebody screamed, you should've heard what I'd seen
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Yeah, I've got a tombstone hand in a graveyard mine, just twenty-two baby I don't mind dying
Snake skin shoes baby put them on your feet, got the goodtime music and the Bo Diddley beat
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me child, tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

National Novel Writing Month - Take the Challenge!

National Novel Writing Month has begun, folks, and in my desire to thrust myself off the cliff known as 'the comfortable life' I've decided to take the challenge. From November 1st until midnight November 30th the goal is to have written 55,000 words (about 175 pages) of a novel, the emphasis being on quantity, not quality. Here's some quotes I love from the website:

"Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft..."
"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing."
"We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together."

After trying, yet failing, to get another writer in my life to take the challenge with me, I thought I'd make the plea here. All it takes is a quick sign-up online. Winners (they count your words after midnight November 30th and then immediately erase your prose so there's no worry of plagiarism - you can also submit it scrambled if you're super paranoid) will get their names in the coveted Winners Circle online. Yes, it's a real challenge, but the point is to just go, man, go! Don't think about it too much. Just write for the mere sake of writing and see what wonderful crap you come up with. And please let me know if you sign up so I can add you as a writing partner.

By the way, the site also has a 'procrastination station' and tons of advice when you get stuck, not to mention motivational emails to get you pumped. So what the hell, let's keep our eye on that finish line and get our creative juices flowin'. Who's with me?!