Coming Down to the Wire

Writing stats, 1 day, less than 5 hours before NaNo: 

• 50,009 words completed on my sci-fi work in progress
• 1,000 words or less from finishing my sci-fi work in progress. YES!
• 4 character descriptions (approx.) shy of what I would like to have before I start NaNo
• 1/2 of an outline done for my NaNo plot
• 1 internship accepted at a rate of:
• 5-10 hours per week
• 1 potential part-time job offer in the works

  Figures I'd start having actual commitments to people right before NaNo starts. Like I said last week, when it rains it pours.
  Finally got the new website project transfer completed and redesigned! It's up and running and looks beautiful.
    As far as NaNo goes, I think the biggest problem I'm having is that I've never tried to write a story like this before and my imagination is coming up short. It's a sci-fi alien comedy story. Sort of in the fashion of Douglas Adams, but I'm not that funny. I just had a bit of insight this morning into a direction I could take it, but I still don't have a solid character description for any of my main characters. I have names and a couple of minor personality traits. That's it. Starting to get scared.
    However, now that I've decided which items on my to-do list can be put on hold once NaNo begins, I feel a little better. I just am going to feel guilty every time one of them gets pushed back. My goal is to make better use of my weekends, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I'm hoping a lot of the television shows will go on break for a couple weeks. I am going to have to cut way back on those and watch them on Hulu, which I have found allows me to multi-task better than live shows. In any case, the blogs are probably going to be fewer and farther between, but maybe that will allow me more time to choose more interesting topics.
    In other news, I set up my first free Kindle promotion for the ebook version of my latest book and it has been doing pretty well. I was a little nervous nobody would even look at it, but a fair number have and have downloaded it! Now I'm just nervous that nobody will like it. I hope that the people who do read it (and didn't just add it to their libraries on principle because it was free) like it, and those that do like it leave reviews! We'll see how it plays out over the next few weeks. If it starts getting bad reviews, I may have to start writing under a pen name, though probably not Constant Writer ;)
    As to Hurricane Sandy, I hope everyone out east is staying safe and keeping their spirits up as the storm wraps up. I can't imagine what it's like to see that kind of devastation in your own backyard, but I hope that everyone knows that the entire country is sending out good thoughts, prayers, and well wishes in your direction :)

Stay strong and keep your head up.

A Writer's Work Is Never Done

  What a week! I helped my friend relaunch his site, with press releases, social media, and other marketing stuff; I launched my new book (!) and have been doing marketing for that; I got a Google Adwords credit when I set up my custom domain hosting, so I set up an ad campaign through Google; I created a new landing page for my book to send the ads to, and added a couple more thousand words to my new writing project.
    Now, all I need to do is find time to write a couple essays and guest blog posts, on top of my regular weekly blog posts. And write my new story. And edit one I already wrote. And come up with a topic for NaNo this november. And so on. And so on.
    The story's still the same--I'm busier now than I was when I was working, but it's all good work--fun, challenging, interesting, and creative--so it hardly feels like work. Which is probably why I've been "working" such long hours! I set up my calendar differently so that all the "work" stuff gets done within 8 or 9 hours and all the other tasks that are more personal to-dos and fun to-dos, like catching up on my personal emails and writing my new story, happen after that 8 or 9 hour window.
    Still, I'm on my computer pretty much all day, so it doesn't really seem like there's much of a shift.

    In funner news: the fall television season starts tomorrow (NBC's first season premiere night) and I'm going to pick up a new blog entirely on television reviews and commentary. I actually started it last fall on WordPress, trying to get in the habit of writing every day to gear up for NaNoWriMo, but I gave up on it as soon as Nano started. This year, I'm going to try to keep up with it a little better.  I moved it over to Blogger so everything will be in one place for easy posting, and did a fun, if a little cliched, new design for it.
    Visit HappyToEntertain.blogspot.com starting Wednesday, 9/12, to follow the new fall shows, returning and new, on CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, and FX and USA when a couple of my returning favorites come back in the next couple months.
    I'm going to have a hard time picking which ones to watch this year! Long list of new shows and old shows on new nights to pick from! Hulu and I will become best friends again for a few weeks while I weed out the decent shows from the crappy ones as well as the ones that are unfortunate enough to run in the same timeslot.

Turn on the boob tube: I'm in the mood to obey. 

-Jack Johnson

Down with the Internet?

What would we do without the Internet? 

    Seriously. We get our news, check our email, update our Facebook statuses, look at our horoscopes, find recipes, play video games, chat, search for that song we have stuck in our heads, and a gajillion other things every single day.
    We can even get the web on our cell phones now so we don't have to be away from the Internet while we work or attend school or anything. It's a love affair that's grown to the point of obsession for many. I admit, I don't think I would go very long without it. If I didn't have it at home, I'd be at the library or a computer lab on campus to check in with the many sites I feel obligated to visit daily, or at least weekly.
    If anyone saw the news this week (and it was kind of hard to avoid) about the Internet getting completely shut down in Egypt, your heart should have skipped a beat once the terrifying thought occurred of something like that happening here. Of course, the US is a much larger country than Egypt, and we have more Internet companies and ways to connect than they do, it still is a scary thought for many of us.
    Perhaps people would learn to love their televisions again, without the comforts of streaming Netflix or Hulu or today's headlines on CNN. But as there was in Egypt, I think there would be mass chaos, confusion, and uprising. Give us healthcare, that's one thing. Take away our Internet, we're gonna have words. Something like the loss of the Internet would cause a larger panic and full-on riot than any Stanley Cup playoffs, Super Bowl games, or even, I think, financial crisis could cause.
    We, as Americans, have grown used to instant gratification, and the loss of the greatest resource to achieve that end would create unprecedented amounts of upheaval.
    So, here it comes: are we too attached to this thing that didn't even exist 20 or 30 years ago? There was no Internet, nor did the average household even have a computer in it when I was born 23 years ago. We could get into the cell phone thing as well while we're at it, but I think the American population as a whole would be more distraught over the loss of the Internet than over the loss of cell phones. This is for the simple facts that if we lost phones and still had the Net, we could still Skype and IM and email. And, there would still be landlines in this scenario. But, I digress (which I knew was going to happen even though I really didn't want it to).
    I know that I, for one, am way too attached to the Internet. I check my email upwards of 10 times a day (that's 10 times or more PER ACCOUNT each day); I check the sports stats and scores; I look up words and search for people and places; I read article after article, blog after blog; I check my Facebook religiously too, even though there usually isn't much new content on mine.
    Let's examine this word with regard to Internet usage: religious. Is the Internet the new religion for the 21st century, at least in this country? I don't mean religion in the sense of it being a god, so don't jump down my throat yet. I mean religion in the sense of the Internet being something that we look to for guidance, for information, on not only how to lead our lives, but as a way to actually lead our lives. There are people who become their online identities and spend so much time online that they do not exist in the "real world" except to eat, drink, and otherwise keep their bodies alive and functioning. Now, I'm not saying everyone does this, or even that everyone wants to spend all their time online, but with the Internet available to us, 24 hours a day, every day--literally in the palms of our hands--it has attained the kind of status that an icon, relic, or talisman has. It's something we have to have, not just want to, but have to have, all the time, whenever we might need it.
    And there's no escaping it. You use it at work, you use it for school, you use for so many daily tasks that you used to be able to do or look for elsewhere--in books, from neighbors or friends, even on that not-so-distant relative, the television. While it doesn't look like we'll be losing our Internet connection any time soon, it might be a good idea to take a little break. Just to see how long you can go without it. See if you can really get through your day. I'll see if I can get through mine.
    One last thing, dear readers: it's a pretty safe assumption that should you accomplish this, the sky will not fall, the stars will not fade, and life will go on mostly as it has before.

Food for thought.