The Journal, Thursday, 8/31

Hey Folks,

Before the sun is up, I already know today will be another day of learning/reading for me. For one thing, irrationally, I’ve become attached to the beginning and ending of months. Go figure.

Frankly, I’m glad August is almost gone. From a writing standpoint, it’s been a traumatic month for me. I probably could have pulled myself out of it any number of times, but I didn’t, so. And in a way, I feel as if I’ve been holding myself back, sort of waiting. Anyway, I’m glad it’s almost gone.

***

We’re in an age in which companies and service providers, instead of assuming we consumers know what we want, assume our lack of intelligence. They assume what we want is for someone else to do everything for us.

This is an assumption that repeatedly ticks me off. It’s part of the natural progression of the dumbing down of America. We’re all being slowly integrated into Sheeple Nation.

Today’s companies strive continually to “improve” their products to make them less complicated and more user friendly. Only they don’t. What they’re actually doing is wresting control away from end users.

They believe we don’t care. And if we do care, we’ll, they’ll never know it or be bothered by it. Ever try to reach a human at one of those corporations?

With every so-called improvement comes less functionality and less personal choice over the functionality that remains.

As an easy example, just look at Microsoft. Both their Windows platform and their applications (Microsoft Office et al) even update automatically now. And they add updates whether or not you want or need them. All of that takes up space and memory in your computer.

And now WordPress is at it again with their impending “improvement” via the forthcoming WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg. I’m leery to say the least.

I’m not a “drag and drop” kind of website builder. I was annoyed when WordPress forced the “customizer” on us, and I’m even more annoyed now. Basically, I just want to continue blogging and working with my website as I have since about 1998.

In short, I want other people’s hands (the hell) off my website.

According to The Digital Reader, I have about a year before Gutenberg will land with both feet on my abdomen. So this morning, I keyed “blogging platforms” into a search engine, and I’ve been reading about them ever since.

I looked through sixteen (16!) comparisons of WordPress with other blogging platforms, and all of them fell short.

So I might just have to put up with yet another learning curve to learn how to use something I didn’t want in the first place. MAN I hate suppositories.

***

Today’s quote, a snippet of conversation between Brett and Jake in The Sun Also Rises. Brett begins:

“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.”
“Yes.”
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God.”

Wow.

***

Okay, anyway, time to wake myself the hell up and become goal-oriented again. For me, now, the year is four months long. Here are my new goals for the rest of this calendar year:

1. Write at least one short story per week, with the first to be finished by Sunday, Sept 3. (I’ll try to squeeze in two more somewhere to make 20 by year’s end and push my story count to 201 published short stories. Stories may be derived from as-yet unwritten novels.)

I might change my mind, but I don’t think I’ll do any of these “in public.” I will see that my donors get a copy of each one, though, as it’s published.

2. Write two novels each in September, October, November and December. (This will bring me to 16. If I fail by one, I’ll still have 15 on the year.)

3. 21,000 weekly word count (the base is 3000 WPD but the goal is weekly to make it more flexible)

If I pull off the weekly word count goal, I will add at least 366,000 words of fiction to my numbers below and finish the year at something over 745,600 words.

This is silly, really. Especially if you consider that 3,000 words per day isn’t all that difficult, yet it will look like quite a feat. I’ll write almost as much fiction in only 4 months as I wrote in the first 8 months. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

But whatever it takes.

Now I’m gonna post this before I lose my nerve. (grin)

Back tomorrow.

Of Interest

For those of you who prefer stylishly formatted ebooks and use D2D, see “Draft2Digital Introduces Professional-Quality eBook Templates” at https://draft2digital.com/blog/draft2digital-introduces-professional-quality-ebook-templates/.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 750 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 750

Writing of ()

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 16642
Total fiction words for the year………… 379620
Total nonfiction words for the month… 17290
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 16400
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 516020

The Daily Journal blog streak……………………………………… 642 days
Calendar Year 2017 Novel Goal (15 novels or novellas)………………… 8 novels or novellas
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 26
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 181

2 thoughts on “The Journal, Thursday, 8/31”

  1. My two cents, hoping that it can be helpful to get the opinion of one of your blog followers.

    I’ve been thinking that if I remember correctly, you basically started not writing anymore when you wanted to start the “writing in public” challenge (you did this challenge for a short while, then stopped, then never started again).

    I’m wondering whether it’s a way for your creative mind to tell you that it is not OK for it to write in public? You had a system that worked, that your creative mind was happy with (writing in the Hovel, at such and such time of the day, not showing your work to anyone until it was finished). You started doing things differently (tweaking your workspace, then trying to write your words in public), and your productivity came to a halt.

    And then once you start not writing, it is much more difficult to go back onto the saddle. You don’t have the incentive of continuing your streak anymore. You start asking yourself: “What’s the point?”.

    So it’s very good news that you’re planning on going back to writing for the last 4 months of the year! Your plan sounds good, you give yourself clear goals, both on the long and the short term. And you don’t try to force your creative mind into something it didn’t seem to want to do (writing in public). The numbers do sound challenging of course, but you know that you’ve already been there, you’ve already have great bursts of productivity, you can go back.

    Good luck with your plan! I’ll be slightly disappointed with the not writing in public, but if it blocks you then most definitively don’t do it! You don’t want to scare your creative mind away with a challenge that doesn’t actually help you. But I’ll follow your numbers (as long as you continue writing your numbers in public – which didn’t seem to disturb your creative mind before). And I really hope you’ll get to your 3000 words a day (whether it is each day or on average).

    Best wishes!

    • Thanks. The writing in public was another drive gear to get me to the computer. And believe it or not, it made it even easier to write into the dark (trust the subconscious) because Someone Was Watching. (grin) However, with my personality it’s also an added challenge. That’s why I said I probably won’t do it this time.

      In a month when I felt as if I did absolutely nothing, I still ended a novel and wrote two short stories. (grin) But during most of this time off, it simply felt “right” to not be writing. But it doesn’t feel right not to be challenged. So back to it.

      Harvey

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