Three of the children are gone from the house tonight, spending their time either at church retreats (Adam & James) or a friend's house (Deb). Only Mary remains, and she went to bed early since she's dealing with an ear infection.
The house is so quiet.
The boys will be gone until Sunday afternoon, and Deb might be back tomorrow or she might be back Sunday afternoon. It all depends on how long she and her best friend can put up with each other.
So Cheryl and I are sitting here with the cats, each typing on our respective laptops while listening to jazz music on the radio. I'm working on a novel, or short story, or some meaningless string of words all thrown together in an interesting (?) way. She's perusing the political websites to see what's going on in the world. Occasionally she'll point out to me something she's found on some website somewhere. And occasionally I'll yawn, because it's getting late and my brain is about fried.
My friend, Paul Ellis, is trying yet again to write a novel as part of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) contest or event or whatever you want to call it. I thought about doing something like that, having wanted to write stories for many, many years, but never having the time available to really devote myself. Plus I'm very lazy. And a professional procrastinator. But I thought I'd support the idea by trying to write a little each night on my various storylines and see how many words I can write each time.
Most novels are fifty thousand words or more, so if I was able to write each day for thirty days, that means I'd have to write [50,000 / 30 = ] 1667 words per day. Unfortunately, they can't be the mindless gibberish I put on my blog; it actually has to contain characters and plot and stuff like that. And it would have to make sense.
On the other hand, I wouldn't have to write much more than what I've already written. If I copy what I've written so far and count up the words, I've got ...
About 363 words. So I need to write enough for roughly six blog entries per night. That shouldn't be hard. If I go look at my current story-in-work, "All Quiet on the Midwestern Front", I've got it up to 2,716 words. And I've been working on it now for about two weeks.
Must be all those family interruptions. Or was it work? Either way, it's hard work to be a novelist. Think I'd better stick with engineering.
Oooh, now my head really hurts.
1 comment:
sounds like you had a lovely Friday evening.
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