(234 words today. Lame.)

If you didn’t already know, the correct time for the US is always displayed at time.gov and there are some links from there about how “standard time” and later “daylight time” developed. Before “standard time” there was no concept of time zones, and noon was periodically established in each particular city when the sun reached the high point in the sky. The various “city time” systems were synchronized in the early 1900’s by federal law, under pressure from the train companies, if I read it right. ...

An old friend who I worked with here at AV has died. I am not sure of the circumstances… more information should be coming to us soon. He was laid off in January and I had not talked to him since then. I am not affected by this personally as much as others around here, since we were not close outside of work, but this reminds me of my own mortality. I think he was very close to my age. I don’t know how or why he died, but… ...

We went to Kabul (our favorite Afghani restaurant) with Darren tonight. It is now 10 pm and I am full from dinner and sucking down a slurpee from 7-11. It is now 10:16. I like going out to eat but I won’t be able to do this every night unless I take a laptop with me or something. Today’s first random song from the jukebox is Cecilia. Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia, Up in my bedroom, making love I got up to wash my face When I come back to bed Someone’s taken my place ...

10:37 Went out to dinner and bought a large cat furniture tonight. Looks like I won’t have much time to write. Therefore I do so anyway. This story is a little emotionally charged, but it’s not *my* story. I probably felt something like this at one time, but it has been a long time if so. So this is not about my experience… it’s just a story.

My big problem with the “spontaneous write a story” exercise is having to come up with a plot/character idea on the fly. Any ideas on how people do this, either for writing short stories or improv-type stuff? Once I have a novel framework, outline, or other harness to work from, maybe I won’t have to worry about generating random ideas. I have a pretty good idea of the setting (contemporary) but I will still need plot and character development.

Another random idea for a partial story. This time I couldn’t decide who the protagonist or point-of-view person was, so I just left out the thoughts and reactions and wrote just the sequence of events. This seems to get more dialogue in, and makes the actual events happen faster. However, I alternated between too much detail (which makes the events happen slower to the reader’s point of view) and very little detail. Comparing the ride to the restaurant and the ride back shows the difference in style (probably just based on my boredom with the scene and wanting to get it over with). If I am writing from a certain person’s point of view (rather than an impartial observer) I could probably use the variations in “speed” to reflect whether the person is involved/engaged (and things seem to be happening slowly, lots of time to think, lots of detail) and when they are bored (which can flow a little faster.. no sense in boring the reader too. :) I guess I need to think more about how to adjust the level of the detail and speed of storytelling. Suggestions? Without a point of view, I didn’t really get across what they were thinking and feeling, mostly because I wasn’t sure, I don’t know these characters well yet, how they met (online, but not sure how) and how they feel about each other. So I took an easy way out and just wrote the events. Might be interesting to go back and put in one person’s point of view and thoughts and see how that changes the scene, and how it changes the word count.

Stolen from a chat with a friend…. According to nanowrimo.com tips: Start writing down, now, every single thing you hear every single person say. Write down every dumb thought that enters your head. You will need it. Also under tips: “Try to dream about your novel, so you won’t lose those hours merely sleeping…” Miche thinks I’m crazy. I say “Yes, I know” Remains to be seen whether I can write 2000 words in a row. Never mind doing it day after day. A Wish for Peace was 1917 words apparently. Christie was 2300 words. So, do that 25 times in 30 days and I’m set. ...

10:49 am. Today’s random writing is brought to you by the “Random” button on livejournal.com. After browsing several random entries, I began to see a pattern: most web journals (at least most of the ones connected to the Random button today) are written by girls who partied pretty hard last weekend, missed some classes last week, are worried about whether what Julie said about Kevin is really true, and are a size 3 but still want to lose weight to look good among the other cheerleaders… Writing the following partial story took like 4 hours, but some of that was research time and a couple brief interruptions. Hopefully I will be able to cut the time down a bit in the weeks to come; I don’t want to spend 4 hours a day, but I might be able to do two. If I choose a setting that is a bit more familiar, I will require less time for research.

I added myself to my own friends list. This means I get to see my own entries mixed in with the friends entries. This is kind of interesting… I don’t know if I like it. I also don’t know if other people reading my friends page will enjoy it or not, but then again, I don’t guess my friends page is viewed much by others… most everyone else has their own friends and don’t need to borrow mine :)