I will not use contractions. I will not use contractions.
WORD COUNT: 14,153
That's (that is) a lie. The key point here being that if you don't (do not) use contractions in your NaNoNovel you'll (you will) be able to get one word counted as two words. Unless you're (you are) me typing this -- but I have been using quite a few contractions because some characters sound even more awkward speaking without them, and for some direct quotations I HAVE to use them.
My goal was to be at 20k or 20,000 words today with my writing of "President Churchill", getting this first draft done so I can just crash come Thanksgiving Day which is the twenty-sixth this year, but at this point I'll (I will) settle for making ten times 1,666 words, the minimum daily which National Novel Writing Month rounds to 16,667 words. I can handle that.
I forgot to mention yesterday that late Sunday afternoon my wife Martha, my kids Sarah and Jeffrey and I went to her parents' Robert and Sharon's house to help them string up Christmas lights on their front porch. Memories of how I hated doing this growing up flooded my mind, but as the tree was put up and the lights were strung around their deck space got tight and Jeffrey wanted me to play
with him in the backyard, and we got in some basketball and I got to push him on the rope swing, and we both laughed and had fun ... something we do all too little lately. And that's (that is) something I need to change, need to do, need to do AND change before the kids are grown and gone. And last week was fun for me, at least between my ears, because it was Staggerford Week.
Every year I re-read Jon Hassler's debut novel Staggerford (ISBN 0345333756) set in the fictional town of that name in Minnesota and focused on a week in the life of Miles Pruitt, an eleven-year English teacher at their high school. Each section is denoted by the date (e.g. Friday, October 30; Saturday, October 31, etc.) so I could actually read it on those days of the week.
And since I've (I have) moved to North Dakota from Florida, I find myself appreciating it more. Along with the most subtle death scene ... I would say in literature of the last fifty years if EVER. The book sounds dry but it is not and the list of quotes I've (I have) got from it has expanded by another half-page, so there are three now.
And yesterday I brought up that I'd (I had) included a reference to Edith Keeler in my current work. Yesterday I stopped in Minot Public Library before work and one of the books I checked out was the comic book adaptation of the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" based on Harlan Ellison's original teleplay. ISBN 9781631402067
For the slower students on the bridge, Keeler's an early 20th century social worker who Kirk and Spock travel back in time and meet to retrieve one of their missing crewmen -- not McCoy as you see on television, but another crewman who's (who has) been trafficking in illegal drugs -- and find out that, in order to restore the flow of their time, they must let die or she will inspire a peace movement
that delays the United States' entry into World War II and allows Germany to win. "The City on the Edge of Forever" is lionized by many fans as one of the if not the best of Star Trek, but I have my doubts. Unless you tune in at just the right time, you will not know what you're watching. But still it is a fine story, and seeing how this could have come out but did not is worth a gander.
Just not a goose, David
That's (that is) a lie. The key point here being that if you don't (do not) use contractions in your NaNoNovel you'll (you will) be able to get one word counted as two words. Unless you're (you are) me typing this -- but I have been using quite a few contractions because some characters sound even more awkward speaking without them, and for some direct quotations I HAVE to use them.
My goal was to be at 20k or 20,000 words today with my writing of "President Churchill", getting this first draft done so I can just crash come Thanksgiving Day which is the twenty-sixth this year, but at this point I'll (I will) settle for making ten times 1,666 words, the minimum daily which National Novel Writing Month rounds to 16,667 words. I can handle that.
I forgot to mention yesterday that late Sunday afternoon my wife Martha, my kids Sarah and Jeffrey and I went to her parents' Robert and Sharon's house to help them string up Christmas lights on their front porch. Memories of how I hated doing this growing up flooded my mind, but as the tree was put up and the lights were strung around their deck space got tight and Jeffrey wanted me to play
with him in the backyard, and we got in some basketball and I got to push him on the rope swing, and we both laughed and had fun ... something we do all too little lately. And that's (that is) something I need to change, need to do, need to do AND change before the kids are grown and gone. And last week was fun for me, at least between my ears, because it was Staggerford Week.
Every year I re-read Jon Hassler's debut novel Staggerford (ISBN 0345333756) set in the fictional town of that name in Minnesota and focused on a week in the life of Miles Pruitt, an eleven-year English teacher at their high school. Each section is denoted by the date (e.g. Friday, October 30; Saturday, October 31, etc.) so I could actually read it on those days of the week.
And since I've (I have) moved to North Dakota from Florida, I find myself appreciating it more. Along with the most subtle death scene ... I would say in literature of the last fifty years if EVER. The book sounds dry but it is not and the list of quotes I've (I have) got from it has expanded by another half-page, so there are three now.
And yesterday I brought up that I'd (I had) included a reference to Edith Keeler in my current work. Yesterday I stopped in Minot Public Library before work and one of the books I checked out was the comic book adaptation of the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" based on Harlan Ellison's original teleplay. ISBN 9781631402067
For the slower students on the bridge, Keeler's an early 20th century social worker who Kirk and Spock travel back in time and meet to retrieve one of their missing crewmen -- not McCoy as you see on television, but another crewman who's (who has) been trafficking in illegal drugs -- and find out that, in order to restore the flow of their time, they must let die or she will inspire a peace movement
that delays the United States' entry into World War II and allows Germany to win. "The City on the Edge of Forever" is lionized by many fans as one of the if not the best of Star Trek, but I have my doubts. Unless you tune in at just the right time, you will not know what you're watching. But still it is a fine story, and seeing how this could have come out but did not is worth a gander.
Just not a goose, David
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