Ta da! Halfway through the month, I’m halfway through the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. I typed in word 25,002 at 11:36 Saturday night. A very short excerpt from my story, The Myrtle of Venus, is at this link.

I should add that the 25,002 words I’ve written are not consecutive. I’ve got an outline and a series of scenes, and I’ve been “fleshing out” the prose in these scenes as I come up with ideas on how to do such. This often means I’ll write a passage for a certain character, then hop to another scene that same character’s in and either “plant” a new plot point I’ll refer to later in the story or flash forward to a subsequent bit of that character’s action.

I’m now up to 23,159 words, with one day left ’til the halfway point in my 50,000-words-in-30-days exercise. I like what I’m doing enough to post excerpts on this site, and will when I get the time and/or inclination to polish up the prose enough to make it presentable.

My novel’s up to 19,515 words. I’m now only one day behind the pace I need to finish 50,000 in 30 days.

Made significant progress today, getting up to 15,460 words. By tomorrow, I’d need a total of 20,000 to meet the average pace required to get to 50,000 by the 30th. Hey, I might make the short-term goal, and I stand an excellent chance of making the final goal. As of this posting I’m #34 among 134 Seattle National Novel Writing Month participants in to-date verbiage production.

…the sold-out Rendezvous Reading Series last night, at which I showed off my travelogue pix from my August jury-duty assignment in Kent. One reading-goer even suggested it should become a book. I’ll consider it.

Now, I’m back to my National Novel Writing Month self-imposed chores. It’s going slower, at 13,117 words. But I did go back to the outlining of scenes, which is much further along. So the prose-ification of these scenes should go much more smoothly from here on.

Have written 8850 words. (I don’t warranty them to be good words.) About 80 percent of my projected remaining scenes are now in breakdown/outline form.

The self-imposed deadline exercise has shown me just how much unproductive routine has accumulated in my current life of long-term underemployment. To make more writing time, I’ve cut my TV viewing to three shows (Black and White Overnight, Coronation Street, and Zed). I’ve cut my news reading to one paper a day. I’ve cut my email reading down to messages real individuals have written specifically to me. Next to be cut: The fourteen web sites I try to look at at least every other day.

My novel writing is almost up to the speed required to finish 50,000 words in 30 days. Ten percent of the alloted time into the task, I’m at 4,500 words (90 percent of the pace I need).

Will I post it here? Yeah, but not just yet.

…is off to a slow start. As of now (7:12 p.m. Sunday), I’ve completed exactly half of the word quota I need in order to make 50,000 words in 30 days.

I’m trying to write my novel the way they write soap operas: Start with a broad overview of the storyline, then elaborate that into a scene-by-scene breakdown, then fill in the actual dialogue and descriptions. I roughly have breakdowns for the first week’s worth of chapters, and am trudging through turning the second chapter into pristine prose.

If I’d been truly on the proverbial bean, I’d have had all the chapter breakdowns, and a couple thousand words o’ text, done by now. With luck and gumption, I may be able to catch up.

In addition to promising y’all a brand spankin’ new print MISC by the end o’ the year, I’ve also just signed up for National Novel Writing Month. That’s a North America-wide group of hundreds of humans who all vow to complete a first-draft novel (minimum 50,000 words) from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30. Why they had to pick one of the short months is beyond me; but at least they give you more time than the Vancouver-based three-day novel writers get.) I’ll post my progress regularly here, and perhaps even (I’m not guaranteeing anything) show some excerpts.

The tale I’m gonna weave is The Myrtle of Venus, an expansion of an unfinished screenplay project I attempted three or four years ago. It involves the destruction of artist-studio space, the tiresomeness of “edgy” corporate youth culture, the tech-industry bubble, Greek mythology, American history, social satire, hot sex, dorky old TV cartoons, and the world’s blandest woman. (The final version of it, as you might surmise, might be a lot longer than the draft I’m about to start writing.)

See yr. loyal, lovable, literate web-editor reading some longer-form essays and fictionettes lithe and in person at Titlewave Books, on Mercer Street in luscious Lower Queen Anne (across from Easy Street Records). The show begins at 7:30 and also includes several other easy-on-the-ears readers and maybe even a solo musician. If you want to discuss the upcoming winter print MISC and maybe even contribute something to it, the hour following Sunday’s event would be a good time to do so. See y’all, okie-fine.

…during my two-hour wait to see the doctor Monday, that I just don’t feel well when I’m not doing my real work.

So I’ve decided there indeed will be another print MISC by the end of this year.

I don’t know the format yet. It could be another magazine-style thang; it could be another newsprint freebie; it could be a trade-paperback anthology. If it must, it could even be a li’l newsletter again. But I gotta do it.

So all youse who’d promised to write for it, I’m taking you on your word again.

The theme section will still be, as stated back in February, “Positive/Negative.” My own piece for that will be a rambling essay combining my recent personal scare with thoughts I’d already been having about “positive mental attitudes” and our “alternative” community’s longstanding rejection of same. (Is it really all that “revolutionary” to just sit around and complain about everything?)

The topic has become more personal to me as I’ve re-assessed my life, my now-dangerous love of stress, my bouts of depression, and my struggles to again become a fiscally-productive member of society. Am I really “addicted” to counterproductive beliefs? Is a negative thought really a luxury I can’t afford?

I won’t promise answers, just an entertaining elaboration of the questions.

But for now, I’ll leave you pondering something I saw during the Flatstock 3 rock-poster show at Bumbershoot. Local poster designers Asterik Studio offered a $10 grab-bag of decals and stickers. Most depicted variations on Asterik’s own logo. But one simply offered, in red flowing script lettering, the slogan “SEATTLE: It’s Where Things Are HAPPENING!”

That’s the attitude (even if it does come from a company run by ex-Californians) I want my revived print rag to take. No whining, no scoffing, no I’m-too-good-for-this-down posturing. We’re here; we want to be here; we want to make things better.

You with me on this?

AS YOU CAN TELL near the upper left corner of this page, our photo exhibit City Light, City Dark is now online, via the PhotoJo site. You’re all cordially invited to buy as many prints of as many images in the collection as you can fit above your couch, over your bed, and at any other revered place in your home or in the home of a loved one.

…wherever we can find it, so here’s a link to some valiant folk trying to preserve the traditional Clallam language.

AN APOLOGY to those who tried to see my photo show the past week and a half. The Nico Gallery apparently had a water-heater explosion. We’ll try to remount the show elsewhere later this year, and will soon post all the images online.

…since I last wrote to y’all. First, thanx to the dozen or so who saw my lovely photo show last Saturday. It’ll be open again this Saturday, 1-4, at Nico Gallery, 619 Western Ave., Second Floor. After the show closes, I may try to put some of it online for print-sales purposes.

The previous Friday evening, I attended the annual birthday bash at the legendary Interbay-neighborhood live-work shack of hippie musician, videographer, and arts-entrepreneur Buddy Foley. The next day, the P-I mapped Foley’s landmark building right smack in the heart of a newly-announced strip mall development. The development would also knock out the Utilikilts office-showroom and a Vespa dealership. The resulting rising property values would threaten all the remaining industrial and arts spaces on the 15th Avenue NW strip between Queen Anne and Magnolia.

Interbay has quietly been one of those districts every city needs but which pro-development politicians see only as empty space waiting to be filled. It’s the only large area north of downtown and south of the Ship Canal that’s still providing manufacturing jobs, not to mention affordable space for certain fringe creative endeavors. We should be working to keep these areas as they are.

…who showed up for our big City Light, City Dark photo opening Thursday night, gawking and smiling. You can still see the show’s 46 stupendous images every Saturday afternoon this month. I’ll try to be there each Saturday, particularly this one. It’s all at the Nico Gallery, 619 Western Ave., Second Floor, in Seattle’s formerly-fun Pioneer Square district.