In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Happy Thanksgiving
* Ridiculous “Are You Kidding Me?” Joke of the Day
* Today will be an abbreviated writing day
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Voltaire
Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you and yours will enjoy a thoughtful, peaceful Thanksgiving day.
Ridiculous “Are You Kidding Me?” Joke of the Day
Disclaimer: I’m not offering an opinion here—political, philosophical or otherwise—only food for thought.
Today over on TKZ you’ll find “True Crime Thursday – How Not to Cook Thanksgiving Dinner” at https://killzoneblog.com/2020/11/true-crime-thursday-how-not-to-cook-thanksgiving-dinner.html. I dived right in, expecting to read something about an actual true crime. Or maybe about something that was truly a crime: you know, a bad thing one person does that risks or causes harm to another.
But as I read the post, I thought, “Wow. This is a true crime? How very silly.” Then I clicked through to the original article and saw why the men were charged: “Getting too close to and messing around with Yellowstone’s hot springs are no-nos and can be dangerous.”
Ah, got it. Funny. Even laughable if it weren’t so frightening, and I’m not talking about the men’s actions.
In my world, a “no-no” is an arbitrary rule levied on children to keep them safe before they are able to reason. As I understand it, in the absence of possible risk or harm to a second party, under our Constitution government’s role is to butt-out and leave people to accept the responsibility for their own actions.
So my writer’s mind wonders whether those men might as easily have been applauded for their ingenuity. Certainly they would have been in the long-ago past when adult human beings strived to be self-sufficient.
But also as a writer, I wonder how many illogical and unconstitutional restrictions any government might levy on its citizenry with the byline (and excuse) of “Keeping You Safe.”
Any author who wishes to write an Orwellian 1984-style dystopian novel might well open with the event at Yellowstone National Park of three men who are locked up and then fined and sentenced to two years’ probation for the dastardly crime of attempting to cook their supper in a way that might have caused them personal harm but caused neither risk nor harm to anybody else.
In a related note, I am acquainted with a woman who was a small child on Java when the Japanese invaded the island during World War II. The invaders herded all the women and children into an interment camp with the excuse that they were doing so “for their own safety.” In later years, the same woman published the illegal diary her mother kept and wrote with passion about that loss of personal freedom.
Today that woman lives in a cottage in a senior home inside the United States. In a blog post around a year ago, she vividly applauded that institution’s decision to lock down the campus, not allowing anyone to leave for any reason, “for our own safety.”
As I wrote at the beginning, I’m not offering an opinion here, only food for thought.
Today will be an abbreviated writing day, so I’d better get to it. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “The Super Writers’ Bundle” at https://mystorydoctor.com/pi-the-writers-bundle/. Not a recommendation, just letting you know it’s out there.
See “Who is this Story about, really?” at https://mystorydoctor.com/david-farlands-writing-tips-who-is-this-story-about-really/.
See “The Monster Publishing Merger” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-monster-publishing-merger-is-about-amazon/. Don’t miss PG’s take. Afterward, there are two other posts about the merger.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 600 words
Writing of The Journey Home: Part 1 (novel)
Day 1…… 3373 words. Total words to date…… 3373
Day 2…… 3312 words. Total words to date…… 6685
Day 3…… 3292 words. Total words to date…… 9977
Day 4…… 3794 words. Total words to date…… 13771
Day 5…… 4482 words. Total words to date…… 18253
Day 6…… 3379 words. Total words to date…… 21632
Day 7…… 4550 words. Total words to date…… 26182
Day 8…… 3326 words. Total words to date…… 29508
Day 9…… 6033 words. Total words to date…… 35541
Day 10… 3847 words. Total words to date…… 39388
Total fiction words for November……… 71010
Total fiction words for the year………… 434288
Total nonfiction words for November… 16700
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 182540
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 616828
Calendar Year 2020 Novels to Date…………………… 6
Calendar Year 2020 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2020 Short Stories to Date… 13
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 51
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 214
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31