Last Night's Rant, and Other Things

I would like to thank all my loyal readers. First of all, yes, I do think Zach is an unusually cute baby. It was good to learn you agree with me. All grandparents seem to believe their grandchildren are exceptionally cute. Now I have proof others noticed the same thing! So I am not being biased. :<) I can't wait until we're able to meet him in person.

I am also grateful to all of you who pointed out the world has not lost hope. It is good to hear, but I think my footnote left one point unclear. I was not depressed; rather I feared my rant might depress you when you read it. I'm not afraid of how Zach will turn out, I worry about the mess the world he has to deal with might be in by then, if we don't do something.

I haven't abandoned hope. I think one of the reasons there is still hope is because now and then people get fed up with the foolishness around us and fight against it. I am not disputing any of the things any of you said, but I am also fed up with the distractions politics offers us instead of real answers. I'm not going to turn this space into nothing but a series of rants, but I did want to clear that up.

I may be a grandfather now, but I am still learning. One reason I posted nothing in late October was because I was trying to get as much as I could out of the way before November. I signed up for NaNoWriMo, hoping to 'stretch my writing muscles' by producing a novel in a month. I had worked out an interesting idea, and I wanted to be able to do it justice. Various complications kept me from doing as much as I intended.

Then an opportunity came my way (on November 1st!) that will keep me too busy to manage the number of words I'd need to write each day to finish by the end of November. As of today, my word count is barely over 2,000. Still, I'm not giving up, and I have learned one lesson from participating. I may not be able to write 50,000 words this month, but whenever I have a spare moment, I do what I can.

It has taught me I can struggle harder to get more of my ideas on paper. For the moment, my project of reworking my old manuscripts is on hold; that will take more work than writing a new book, due to the editing needed. But I will keep learning how to accomplish more in less time. That won't end with the month of November. Planning to write a book this month left me determined it will be finished as quickly as I'm able, even if I don't meet my self-imposed deadline.

I will have to slow down my writing efforts when contest entries come in, and when I'm working on editing and typesetting the winning entry, but I won't stop altogether. I am learning to expand what I can do, and that is always a valuable lesson. I also do intend to go ahead with my blog on writing, which some of you indicated an interest in working with me on. That simply needs to wait until my contest is over, so I have time to do it justice.

Finally, I was planning to overhaul my template and update my link list in late October, along with writing a post announcing my intention to take part in NaNoWriMo. That never happened, thanks to a false alarm that had me scrambling to ensure I had a reliable, up to date backup. I won't be able to do it all at once, but I will be putting in new links and improving my template as I have the chance. I'll also be adding tags to my old posts (if Blogger allows) so they will be easier to locate.