I’m very very close to 50,000 words right now but I cheated a little and posted 2000 words from prior writing so I have to get 52,000 words before November 30th in order to complete Nanowrimo. Still, I’m less than 4000 words away from the goal and that’s kindof crazy if you ask me. I’ve never written this much on one topic, or gotten this close to finishing a first draft of a novel. Right now I have 136 double-spaced pages and am about 2/3rds of the way finished and it’s mind-boggling to me. Which I suppose is always true of daunting goals once completed – the act of having done it can seem impossible even in hindsight.
Today I had another little breakthrough on the novel front which may turn out to be a hokey plot device once all is said and done – but we’ll see. It’s basically leading to a four part novel in which the first part is told all in conversation and internal monologue, the second part is an exchange of letters, dialogue and a little internal monologue, the third part is straight first-person storytelling, and the fourth part is three letters/notes. I know that doesn’t tell you much about what’s going on with it – but I’ve got the drafts for part 1,2, and 4 almost done and I’m starting on part three tomorrow which is some of the trickier writing because it relies on stuff I don’t know anything about – like building a log cabin by hand.
Yeah. It’s going to be a fun December as my writing slows down and I try to make a plausible backdrop for Frances – but I gotta say that as much as the nineteen-thirties sucked, it seems a lot simpler than the economic crisis of today, especially if you lived in a place where you could still grow food and tend some chickens and stuff (noted that this was not the case for most of prairies and plains people who were driven from their land due to the dustbowl). At least there’s something comforting about writing characters who you know are going to live through it no matter what’s going on around them. So it’s nice to go hang out with them, you know? Even when their lives aren’t easy.
I’m a tad fed up with reality at the moment, you see, not my personal life (which is going swimmingly) but the general political climate around us has really got me down. Right wing governments, toothless workers and a labour leadership who doesn’t seem to get that the reason they can’t rally the vote is because it isn’t the answer people are looking for. Sad isn’t it? In the middle of an economic crisis that is only bound to get worse (don’t believe the hype, things have *not* turned around as long as the recovery is “jobless”) it seems like we’re damned any which way and I pretty much feel like giving up the fight right now. Because it’s so much nicer to hang out in my imaginary world, or write songs than sit in rooms full of people who know that things are bad but are limited in their imagination for *real* change.
Somehow the labour-left has completely lost its ability to envision the society people might want to live in and the only program is election, election, election. Which is a hard sell if you ask me. I’m not sure any of us really buy it anymore and when the call is that “unions need to change” we can’t hear that either. I’ve got some articulate rant coming on this subject I’m sure…. but I’ll try to hold off until after the BCFed Convention so I can at least get through tomorrow without grimacing too much.
