Whinet: The Word I Coined....

I just ran across this and it made me laugh. How did I find it? I don't know. I was looking for something else and this popped up. Strange ... and yes, I'm the person who actually made this silly entry:

1.	Whinet	3 thumbs up
	A poet whose poetry is composed of nothing more than self-centered whining. A whinet's poetry is also marked with a complete lack of poetic skill or knowledge of craft. Whinets usually write exclusively free verse because all form is too challenging for them. "How was the slam?" "It blew. Too many whinets - not enough poets." by mike duron Feb 3, 2005 email it

Cloud

It's four in the morning and tear comes to my eye.

Bach/Wilhemlj's Air on the G String is a cloud of absolute beauty I could live on forever.

Why does it remind me so much of friends who have died over the years?

It brings ghosts to me from the shadows of my room.

It's the memory of a lost love in the soft hair of the present.

Words Count

Words in novels add up to something. They always do. They add up to word counts.

Looking over three random pages in a random paperback, I counted 270 words on the first sample, 278 on the second, and 277 on the third. The average word count per page was 275. Looking at five random paperbacks, I found they had 360, 332, 394, 327, and 372 pages each -- an average of 357 pages per book.

Multiplying 275 (average words per page) by 357 (average pages per paperback) gives me the average number of words for the five randomly-selected 'typical' paperbacks: 98,175.

Checking my Word document, I see I have approximately 9,600 words down. If I want a word count somewhere around 99,000, I should keep my telling of the tale to about 100,000 words. This gives me around 1,000 words to delete on revisions.

Dividing 100,000 by 9,600 gives me 10.42 (approximately).

So what does this all mean?

It means I'm 1/10th of the way to the finish line. Were I running a marathon rather than writing a book, I would be a mere 2.16 miles away from the start line, with about 23.6 miles ahead of me.

That's not the way I see it though. It isn't a chore, writing this book. I just have to know exactly how long the runway is so I can get this one away successfully and get on to the next one....

Chapter 9

I've finished Chapter 9! Yes!

It all came as easily as rain to a cloud. Sunni to the rescue -- surprisingly. Narrator shown to be a total wimp at fighting, but at least some courage. Nice twist. Nice.

I don't know how this'll all end up in the final edit, but I'm so happy to have finished nine and moved on to ten. I can't wait to finish the whole thing but I think I'm about a third of the way there.

:)

Now I'll reward myself with a burger (double cheese), fries, onion rings, and a diet soda from -- where else? -- Whataburger! heh....

Writing Again

Working on the novel more in my head last night. I managed to get a new chapter started, but I stopped to do a little online research. What does a flash-bang grenade look like? I mean, what is it like to have one land at your feet and go off a split second after you've looked down at it?

Thankfully this is something I've never experienced first hand. I haven't experience being shot either -- though I have had a gun in my face twice. So, what can I do but imagine? Well, George Orwell did get shot in the neck and wrote about it. Here's a link. I'll quote it here in case that link goes dead in the future:

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

Wait. Is that unattributed in the page to which I linked?? Well that won't do! Where the hell is Orwell supposed to have written that? Let me see...

Well, here's the link to which the person above linked: http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

Again, in caset the 'source' vanishes, I'll include the text here (at any rate, it isn't text belonging to the author of the page but supposedly to Orwell so fair use and all that):

I have been about ten days at the front when it happened. The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.

It was at the corner of the parapet, at five o'clock in the morning. This was always a dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky. I was talking to the sentries preparatory to changing the guard. Suddenly, in the very middle of saying something, I felt -- it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness.

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

The American sentry I had been talking to had started forward. 'Gosh! Are you hit!' People gathered round. There was the usual fuss - 'Lift him up! Where's he hit? Get his shirt open!' etc., etc. The American called for a knife to cut my shirt open. I knew that there was one in my pocket and tried to get it open, but discovered that my right arm was paralyzed. Not being in pain, I felt a vague satisfaction. This ought to please my wife, I thought; she had always wanted me to be wounded, which would save me from being killed when the great battle came. It was only now that it occurred to me to wonder where I was hit, and how badly; I could feel nothing, but I was conscious that the bullet had struck me somewhere in the front of my body. When I tried to speak I found that I had no voice, only a faint squeak, but at the second attempt I managed to ask where I was hit. In the throat, they said, Harry Webb, our stretcher-bearer, had brought a bandage and one of the little bottles they gave us for field-dressings. As they lifted me up a lot of blood poured out of my mouth, and I heard a Spaniard behind me say that the bullet had gone clear through my neck. I felt the alcohol, which at ordinary times would sting like the devil, splash on the wound as a pleasant coolness.

They laid me down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted I was done for. I had never heard of a man an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the corner of my mouth. "The artery's gone," I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed I was killed. And that too was interesting -- I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, s me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle, but in this stale corner of the trenches, thanks to a moment's carelessness! I thought, too, of the man who had shot me -- wondered what he was like, whether he was a Spaniard or foreigner, whether he knew he had got me, and so forth. I could not feel any resentment against him. I reflected that as he was a Fascist I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken prisioner and brought before me at this moment I would merely have congratulated him on his good shooting. It may be, though, that if you were really dying your thoughts would be quite different.

They had just got me on to the stretcher when my paralyzed right arm came to life and began hurting damnably. At the time I imagined that I must have broken it in falling; but the pain reassured me, for I knew that your sensations do not become more acute when you are dying. I began to feel more normal and to be sorry for the four poor devils who were sweating and slithering with the stretcher on their shoulders. It was a mile and a half to the ambulance, and vile going, over lumpy, slippery tracks. I knew what a sweat it was, having helped to carry a wounded man down a day or two earlier. The leaves of the silver poplars which, in places, finger our trenches brushed against my face; I thought what a good thing it was to be alive in a world where silver poplars grow. But all the while the pain in my arm was diabolical, making me swear and then try not to swear, because every time I breathed too hard the blood bubbled out of my mouth.

Why doesn't anybody on teh interwebs ever bother to source anything? Or even check to see that it was indeed written by the person to which it's attributed before quoting it?

Okay, let me google a snippet of the passage and see if I can verify it anywhere else. How about this random partial sentence: "The leaves of the silver poplars which, in places, finger our trenches brushed against my face?"

Google-ize the thing. Nope. The only return is the page to which I linked above!

Okay, I'll google-ize "Orwell shot in neck" next and see what happens. Hey, don't laugh if I look like a total illiterato right now. I didn't write a doctoral thesis on Georgie boy now....

Here's one of the returns:
http://wesclark.com/jw/orwell_gunshot.html

Well, okay, now I'm getting somewhere. It looks like the source of this piece is Eyewitness to History, edited by John Carey. I think I've read that, actually. If I recall correctly, there's something in there about a public execution in Turkey where a man is tied to a barrel and has a large stake sledg-hammered into his anus and through his body until it exits at his shoulder.

Let me check for that book at Amazon.com... Ah. Here it is:


Okay, yes. I remember having this book so many years ago! Yes, this book came out right after I graduated from high school. Okay, so is there a piece in this book written by George Orwell titled something like, "The Spanish Civil War: Wounded by a Fascist Sniper, near Huesca, 20 May 1937?"

Oh well, for that I'll have to wait until I can get my hands on a copy -- or else verify some other way and read the story in the book itself.

For now, I'm off on a tangent again and should be getting back to work.

So where was I? Oh, yes, I was writing a chapter last night -- or early this morning -- where the fab four of the novel are in Sunni's apartment and the bad guys come in for a visit....

Build Me a Time Machine

I'd like to be a disembodied traveler moving through space and time. One of the stops would be Chopin, writing his Nocturne No.8 in D-Flat, Opus 27, Number 2.

How long did it take him to write it? Did he create the whole thing then set to putting the sheet music together? Or did he write it down as he created it? Did he feel, as Henry Miller did, that he was merely a receiver ... a medium through which the message traveled? Did he feel he was the actual creator?

To have been there, perhaps not disembodied but in person, to speak with him or simply watch as he created his beautiful music would be something I would definitely do if somebody were to build me a time machine....

Writing, Writing, Writing....

I've been working on my novel all night. Looking at the top of the Word document, I see this -- "[START DATE: 23OCT04]" Did I really start telling this story almost three and a half years ago!? I think that's unbelievable. I can remember sitting at that old computer, my keyboard and monitor on a round glass-topped table, in my comfortable little room so long ago.

Of course I haven't been writing the thing non-stop since October, 2004, but re-reading the few chapters I've completed and re-visiting the internet links I referenced so long ago has re-energized me. Even though my back is killing me and I've been awake for over twenty-four hours now, I don't want to go to bed. I want to keep reading and writing.

"A writer lives in his head." That's the old chew and I guess it's pretty much true.

Since I reference Miguel Delibes in my novel, I looked him up again and found this nice little site. It's great. I spent a little time poking around. I can tell Ramón García Domínguez wrote the thing in Castellano (a language in which I'm fluent) and translated it to English. Little details give him away.

At any rate -- just a quick note for future reference. I think I'll bathe my little dog, Gizmo, brush his coat, put him in his cage until he dries, fix myself something to eat, then, like a champion sumo wrestler, go to sleep right after I get done eating. Hopefully I'll be up by 5:30 or 6:00 p.m.

Losing Pachelbel

As I write this, I'm listening to the Chamber Orchestra Paillard play Pachelbel's "Canon in D," and I'm very sad because over the years I've developed tinnitus and a slight bit of hearing loss. I remember being around fourteen years old and listening to this piece being played by other orchestras -- listening to this while studying music theory.

I know exactly what I can't hear now. I'm missing the subtlety of the piece because I have to play it loudly in order to hear the softer parts.

It's still very beautiful though. Jean-Francois Paillard and the Chamber Orchestra did a wonderful job with this immortal piece of human beauty.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog.

I don't have anything to say right now, but I promise to return later....