an email I recieved from a world famous author

Dear Frank,

You're a fool. You know that, don't you? Because only a fool would try a stunt as crazy as this. You want to write a 50,000 word novel in one month?! Do you have sawdust in your skull? When there are so many other more useful things you could be doing, like cleaning up the house and yard, taking a correspondence course in Chinese, or contributing your time and effort to a charitable cause? Whatever is possessing you?

Consider the first card of the Tarot deck, titled The Fool. There's this young man traipsing along with a small dog at his heel, toting a bag of his worldly goods on the end of his wooden staff, carrying a flower in his other hand, gazing raptly at the sky—and about to step off a cliff, because he isn't watching his feet. A fool indeed. Does this feel familiar? It should. You're doing much the same thing. What made you ever think you could bat out a bad book like that, let alone write anything readable?

So are you going to give up this folly and focus on reality before you step off the cliff? No? Are you sure? Even though you know you are about to confirm the suspicion of your dubious relatives, several acquaintances, and fewer friends that you never are going to amount to anything more than a dank hill of beans? That you're too damned oink-headed to rise to the level of the very lowest rung of common sense?

Sigh. You're a lost soul. So there's no help for it but to join the lowly company of the other aspect of The Fool. Because the fact is, that Fool is a Dreamer, and it is Dreamers who ultimately make life worthwhile for the unimaginative rest of us. Dreamers consider the wider universe. Dreamers build cathedrals, shape fine sculptures, and yes, generate literature. Dreamers are the artists who provide our rapacious species with some faint evidence of nobility.

So maybe you won't be a successful novelist, or even a good one. At least you are trying. T hat, would you believe, puts you in a rarefied one percent of our kind. Maybe less than that. You aspire to something better than the normal rat race. You may not accomplish much, but it's the attitude that counts. As with mutations: 99% of them are bad and don't survive, but the 1% that are better are responsible for the evolution of species to a more fit state. You know the odds are against you, but who knows? If you don't try, you'll never be sure whether you might, just maybe, possibly, have done it. So you do have to make the effort, or be forever condemned in your own bleary eyes.

Actually, 50,000 words isn't hard. You can write “Damn!” 50,000 times. Oh, you want a readable story! That will be more of a challenge. But you know, it can be done. In my heyday, before my wife's health declined and I took over meals and chores, I routinely wrote 3,000 words a day, taking two days a week off to answer fan mail, and 60,000 words a month was par. Now I try for 1,500 and hope for 2,000. That will do it. If you write that much each day, minimum, and go over some days, you will have your quota in the month. On the 10th of the month of August, 2008, I started writing my Xanth novel Knot Gneiss, about the challenge of a boulder that turns out to be not stone but a huge petrified knot of reverse wood that terrifies anyone who approaches it. Petrified = terrified, get it? And by the 30th I had 35,000 words. That's the same pace. If I can do it in my doddering old age—I'm 74—you can do it in your relative youth.

Of course you need ideas. You can garner them from anywhere. I noticed that our daily newspaper comes in a plastic bag that is knotted. The knot's too tight to undo without a lot of effort, so I just rip it open to get at the goodies inside. It's a nuisance; I wish they'd leave it loose. But I thought, maybe there's this cute delivery girl who has a crush on me, and she ties a love -knot to let me know. Not that at my age I'd know what to do with a real live girl, but it's still a fun fantasy. Okay, there's an idea. I could use it in my fiction. Maybe even in a Pep Talk. The mundane world has provided me with an opening. It will do the same for you, if you're alert.

Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessary flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress. It may not be pretty at first. Prettiness doesn't come until later, at the polishing stage, which is outside your month. You just have to get it done by brute force if necessary. So maybe your ongoing story isn't very original. That's okay, for this. Just get it done. Originality can be more in the eye of the reader than in any objective assessment.

You can make it from a standing start, even from a foolish daydream when you should have been paying attention to the Pep Talk. You will want to try for a bit more quality, of course, and maybe a spot of realism. Garner an Idea, assemble some Characters, find a suitable place to start, and turn them loose in your imagination. Now go home and start your engines!

Piers

PIers Anthony is the author of the Xanth series. You can learn more about him and his work by visiting his website.

The first ten things I could think of to be thankful for

These are in order of how they came to me.
1) Thank God, America has voted for a new direction

2) Thank you for falling gas prices (last low price I have seen is 1.69 per gallon)

3) Thank God for Walt's grocery store and their discounted for quick sale stuff

4) Thank God for Connie French for inviting us over for dinner today

5) Thank God for the people who love to write

6) Thank God for Blogger.com providing blogging spots for us cheap people who love to write

7) Thank God for the internet. It was one of the few places where people could speak honestly and where the real truth could come out (not the WordSpeak that TV, radio, newspapers have dumped on us)

8) Thank God Jewel (our first stop) had a stack of today's papers. I did not want to go driving around looking for a newspaper all morning.

9) Thank God for coffee. 'nuff said.

10) Thank God this item list is over.

I found this website amusing

I googled parody and got this website.

Get a first life

The authors assume that anyone taking the time to read that website would be better off doing something else, like having a first life. I had to look at the website twice before I figured that out. Must be Canadian humor.
I think it is run by Canadians.
I find the idea of having a second or third life is much better than just the current first life I am in. The world is full of things built to distract you from your first life (ie, beer, television, iPods,and of course infomercials) Does life get better if you have designer stuff ? Paris Hilton thinks so -( but that is assuming that Paris Hilton thinks). Would I be better off if I lived in Tahiti ? I think so but know I would be bringing all the baggage that is me along so it might not be any better. Where is this essay going - Nowhere - I do not know why you thought it would make sense but perhaps you didn't - in which case you are happy now because NOW you know (by admission from the author) that this makes no sense. And since this piece makes no sense - it reflects how I feel about my first life - so there I guess it does have a point - not a very good one but hey at least I tried. (Isn't that what Hitler said ?)
The older I get, the less enthused I am about trying to change my life - too much work I think - and that is usually enough to keep me from doing whatever it is I thought about doing. When I was young, there was not too much I wanted to keep the same so change was easy. But now, I feel that there just is too much in my life - I don't mind change one thing but the idea of a domino effect is daunting - I think it becomes too much work - so I settle for changing the interior world where change is much less daunting - hard yes - but much less daunting.
So call me -
Daunte ( in ferno)

Frank

Election Results from Bumville

In one of the most uncontested contests of election night, a stunning victory was declared last night for the dark horse candidate. The contest was of course for the mayor of Bumville, a position that up until this year nobody wanted. With the rumors swirling about that Bumville would get an Indian casino, two candidates for mayor appeared from nowhere:

Mr. Smith representing the Blue party   and 

Mr. Jones representing the Red party.

After a long and arduous campaign, in which both candidates were revealed to have been in bed with BIg Oyle, the election finally produced a winner:

Barracks O'Bummer who as previously mentioned was the dark horse candidate simply because he owned a dark horse (actually an unwashed Irish wolfhound).  Mr. O'Bummer was sleeping in his home (the abandoned barracks of the abandoned Nike missile site for which Mr. O'Bummer was named or nicknamed as the case might be) which was also Bumville's only polling place, when he awoke from a drunken stupor, got up and went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and went back to bed. 

BUT in actuality, Mr. O'Bummer cast the only vote in the mayoral election and thus became Bumville's newest mayor. In retospect, Mr. O'Bummer thought it was odd that someone gave him reading material as he was entering the bathroom but the quiz on it was something he could do as it featured only one question - choose the new mayor. Mr. O'Bummer stated afterward that he thought it was a contest application and thus filled in his name in the space provided. He finished his business and gave the paper back to the person who had given it to him. Afterwards poll workers noticed that booth number one had a very unpleasant smell to it and as this was the only voting booth in Bumville, someone would have to clean the booth before voting could continue. And since no one wanted to, the election was ended there and Mr. O'Bummer was declared the winner.

In a side note: Mr. O'Bummer's dog (whom he calls his running mate because he is Australian and that means the dog is his buddy whom he runs with) is named Hillary.

Reporting from Bumville - this is CNN (the Cynical News Network)