Is it just me, or...

Surfing around my usual blog spaces for the past several days I'm beginning to have this feeling like Jeff Goldblum in "The Big Chill" when he says, "I have the feeling there's sex going on around here."

Except that it's not sex, but NaNoWriMo - I have the feeling there's novel writing going on around here. Some people are posting bits of it; some are posting word counts and keeping the torch lit; others are complaining about not doing it or not enough of it; yet others said they were going to do it and, in fact, they've become pretty quiet on the blog scene so maybe they are "really going at it."

I'm not much of a fiction writer, though I've made brief stabs at some very short pieces, none of which I was very happy with. I did write most of a screenplay, though, for a "screenplay writing" course at Emerson many years ago, so I guess that could count as fiction in a way. It was fun when my characters took off in their own directions and things just seemed to happen. It was also fun to hear about my classmates' scripts - disaster movies, slasher movies, you name it. Mine was an offbeat love story featuring a shy middle-aged teacher who's been laid off due to a tax-revolt proposition and is now relegated to working in a shoe store and living in the immaculately maintained home of his dear departed mother; he takes a poetry workshop wherein he meets a free-spirited young woman who writes florid poetry that he finds awful yet that disturbs his dreams with her ankle-braceleted feet (he works in a shoe store, remember). I believe I was originally inspired by the lovely little movie, "Turtle Diary," which is not much like the story I ended up with, other than that the protagonist emerges from his shell, so to speak, by the turn of events.

Anyway, good luck to all those on the NaNoWriMo challenge!

8:43:16 PM      trackback [] 

What form will your revolution take?

Over at the Wish Jar Journal, Keri Smith posts that she saw "Motorcycle Diaries" and it fired her up. So she put out a challenge:

All that is required of the artist is to put the energy (the words, the ideas, the paintings) out there, one little piece at a time. One feels something, then expresses something.

And that m'dear I can do. Yes I can.

As my creative writing professor in college was fond of saying, "When the Japanese were in a period of peace, they painting only fans."

What form will your revolution take?

5:39:07 PM      trackback [] 

November woods

[Keith Hill Rd, Grafton MA, Nov. 6]

8:43:02 AM      trackback []