50,000 words? In 30 days? No problem.

I'm exhausted, mentally, but I did it with a day to spare. Now on to finish the story, probably another 30,000 words later!

Whut? Oh, right, NaNoWriMo.

Awakening from slumber here to say that I'm doing the National Novel Writing Month thing. It's a challenge for a writer to try and finish a novel in a single month, minimum 50,000 words. You get nothing but satisfaction and a little widget to show on your blog or Facebook page or whatever, but trust me, it's more than worth it if you can pull it off.

Current word count is just short of 28,000. I'm on pace to get it done!

Garfield Minus Garfield

This is possibly the simplest satire I've ever seen, and one of the most effective: turning the most generic of all newspaper comics into a heart-wrenching story of one man's existential struggle against loneliness and depression: Jon Arbuckle, the loneliest man alive. How much longer can he hold out against his demons?

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Bear witness to the slow death of an innocent man at the link above, and I defy you to come away unchanged. (Or, at the very least, unamused.)

Vacation Time

It's time for this guy to head down to the great Florida peninsula. I promise not to blame anyone for inflicting George Bush on us, nor to refer to the place as "America's wang", nor to complain bitterly about the spectacular combination of heat, humidity, and relentless sunshine to which its residents have become inured. I will, instead, do my best to enjoy the company of long-unseen family members and find some good times down there on the Gulf Coast, catch the Salvador Dali museum and follow up on rumors of a great independent bookstore, Haslam's, in St. Petersburg, which is located somewhere on the underside of the shaft of the Wang.

I'm very sorry for that. You can blame Homer Simpson for implanting that image on my consciousness. Sharing it, I confess, was entirely the fault of my own perverse streak.

Quick note

Something must have taken hold at Wildacres, because two weeks ago I sat down to write a key part of the book and now I have over 8,000 words encompassing two important days. I don't know whether they're any good, but that part of the story is complete and I'm now moving on to another part, trusting myself to link them all together later. Already, ways to do that are suggesting themselves.

Onward we go toward completing this story.

Sunday quick link

http://thebrowntweedsociety.com/

The Brown Tweed Society is a smart, funny entertainment blog maintained by some sharp guys. Lots of insightful good humor and surprising depth to be had here. Do check them out.

A small annoyance.

So, when I bought my cherished, indispensable laptop, it came with a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007. Of course, I immediately installed Open Office, but I thought I'd give Big Bill's product a whirl, if for no other reason than already having years of experience using other versions of Word. For the most part, it's fine.

But that grammar checker. Oh my.

I believe I have a good handle on grammar. When I write, it's usually in a conversational, offhand tone, and therefore somewhat prone to be incorrect under a rigid and humorless application of the rules, but overall I'm right far more often than I'm wrong. Except, of course, according to Word 2007.

It would be one thing if Word 2007 were the software equivalent of the too-rigid grammar police, technically correct regardless of euphony. But Word 2007 has quirks far beyond that. Instead, Word 2007 offers suggestions as changing "I am" to "I is". In place of "Harry's", it suggested "Gharry's", "Hurry's", and "Harries", while recognizing Harry in its non-possessive state as a correct, common proper name. Its suggestions are hilariously bizarre, like listening to someone riffing on Dan Quayle's suggested spelling of potato, except that it's entirely earnest.

I'm not writing to bash Word 2007. No. I'm writing to thank Word 2007 for instilling a sense of self-reliance and faith in my understanding of grammar, because I'm sure as hell not relying on that piece of junk.