NaNoWriMo 2021

Had the tree man again and haven't even started writing yet. I still have five and a half hours. This 60 foot tree leaned over my kitchen for years with a gouge from heavy equipment from long before I moved here. I couldn't get a price I could pay to cut it until this great guy came along. The last bid was $1500. He did it for $600. It was $300 to cut, $300 to haul it off. Well, he bit off a big chunk when he agreed to move the tree. He worked for a long time yesterday and hauled two loads. Today he hauled a third load before the rain began. Tomorrow he will come back for a final load. He has to pay the dump for each load. All this for $300. I'm adding $40 to it. I wish I had more. He definitely should raise his prices.

My output has been sub-par today and yesterday. It may seem a copout to some, but my dealing with the tree man has exhausted me. It doesn't take as much at 79 as it did even a few years ago. He is done for good and I don't have much to wear me out tomorrow, so I ought to do tolerable at least.

Understandable. I'm exhausted. 9k but I am beat.

I could have sat on the porch and let him do it alone, but he was one man moving a 60' pine tree and hauling the pieces in a pick up. I cut the smaller branches off of the limbs, then made separate stacks of everything. Then I made a fire out front and carried barrels of material to dump on it. I still have great piles to move and burn, but this can be done at a slow pace now. Today if I don't perform well it's my fault totally. I just got several hundred words yesterday.

I did better today. I ended a chapter in the middle of a knife fight.

that is some seriously impressive multi-tasking...

Red could easily have killed Two Feathers Crow, but he orchestrated his moves in a way that fooled him into believing it was a stalemate at the end.

I did much better today. Not the same speed as someone I know on a2k, but I'm happy.

Still working it tonight.

Did good.

18,345. A decent day with some weird turns which (heh) were not in my outline. Characters running off the rails again—so, a typical NaNo.

By the time I get through tonight my count will be 12000. For me, that's great.

I finished late but made the deadline.

Yesterday was tough because I let the political threads into my head before the first writing. Saving my energy for writing today. My membership with Vocal just gifted me a three month upgrade, making me eligible to enter the contests for big money. Couldn't they have waited a month?

Of course they couldn't.

Keep at it, you're doing well.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Dorothy Parker

I have that book, plus a small library of books on writing. Oddly, they don't write for me, just lecture and yell from the side. I need them to lift me above Faulkner, Steinbeck, Poe, Twain, and Hemingway. Truthfully, I may consult such books but in the end it's just me, the Word Processer, and the vast unknown.

Ditto.

My best wishes, Edgar. The Parker quote just happened to come up in an email to me today...and I thought this was a good place to share it.

At times writing feels like torture, but once you've got the bug, it never goes away.

I have longed to be a writer since I was a kid. At least now I can begin and finish my work. Funny thing, I used to make a beginning, then it would peter out. When I quit drinking and smoking and paid attention to the diet I suddenly could finish most of what I started.