First Snow

In fewer than two days I went from sunny Southern California weather to the first snow of winter.  The cold white stuff didn't even stay as long as a day except for really shady corners.  But it looked beautiful while it lasted.

Even though it's gone now, it's the sign of things to come.  I can pack away all my shorts and get out all my sweaters.  Growing up in Los Angeles, I never understood having a summer or winter wardrobe.  Now I get it.  Out come the smartwool socks and away go my short white athletic socks.

It's a good thing I love winter, 'cause it's coming and there's nothing I can do about it.

Nano Update, Day 6:
Plot?  Main character's girlfriend nagging him about lack of "real" job
Word Count? 10414 (back on track, plus more!)

Ranked Voting

Today was Election Day in my neck of the woods.  And for the first time ever, we used ranked voting in the mayoral and city council races.  Ranked voting is also known as instant runoff voting.

Around here, the city council election is the current hot ballot.  There are seven candidates and voters can rank their top six.  It's made for an interesting election season.  There's been very little negative campaigning, and even if you have a yard sign for one candidate, you'll still get visits from the other people running, as they want to be your second or third choice or maybe even your sixth choice.

The counting of the ballots might be interesting.  If one candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, it'll be easy.  They win.  However, it could get complicated with up to three or four rounds of vote reallocation.  The city has given themselves up to two weeks to work it all out.

I'm hoping that they'll spell it all out for us, with "circles and arrows and a paragraph" for each round, explaining it all in detail for the voters.

And if the experiment works and the positive quality of the campaigns sticks around, I'd like to see ranked voting expand to the state and national races. Wouldn't that be nice?

Nano Update, Day 5:

Plot?  Main character finishing off his first day of work. . . must have been a long day!

Word Count? 7843

Recovery

I got home from my amazing LA trip last night.  And today I'm recovering.  I should be unpacking, doing my laundry, paying some bills, generally cleaning up the house and getting back to a normal schedule.

However, what I will actually be doing is sleeping late, reading, writing, watching television, and accomplishing none of the above tasks.  I don't know why, but my first day home is always pretty useless for getting anything important done.

I might have gotten some of my laziness out of my system last night.  I caught up on a few tv shows I missed, worked on my nano novel, ate leftover Halloween candy, and mostly sat on the very comfy couch.  Par for the course.

I don't know.  We'll see what happens.  Certainly I have a long to-do list. Maybe a miracle will happen and I will wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

But probably not.

Nano Update, Day 4:

Plot?  Main character is at his first day of work at the coffee shop

Word Count? 5852

Dads Taping

As a final ending to our sitcom room experience, one of my team decided it would be interesting and fun to attend a sitcom taping.  We went to see Dads, chosen because tickets for it were still available the day before the show.  That's a bad sign.  Another bad sign?  Dads had bad reviews and ratings.  On a positive note, Dads had just been picked up for its back nine, meaning they had been given the green light to finish out their first season.

According to Ken Levine, guru of the sitcom room experience, Fox ordered more shows despite the ratings and reviews because they wanted to have a toehold in the multi-camera world.  Multi-camera shows are the ones taped in front of a live studio audience, with real people laughing.  (Although my Mom says it still sounds fake.)

Interesting? Yes.  Fun?  Well, it was interesting.

First off, you're supposed to get to the parking garage near the studio at least an hour and a half before the show starts taping.  You hand in your ticket, get a different ticket and are bussed over to the actual studio.  You are not allowed to take cameras, phones, or any other electronics in with you.  Then the security guards wand you and search any bags.  After that they walk you through various sound stage areas until you get to a spot where they make you wait in line for 20-30 minutes.

Finally, you get to go into the studio.  You are advised to go to the bathroom on your way in, because you are told you will not get a chance to go again for a long time.  (Earlier, someone had mentioned that taping can last until 9ish, so that's a good four hours with no bathroom break.)  Luckily, that is not totally true, it's just that everyone needs to be escorted to the bathroom so we don't wander onto the stage, so I think they discourage bathroom breaks as a general policy.

The studio is where you meet the warm-up comedian, whose job it is to keep the audience happy and laughing.  It seems like a very difficult job.  Alan, our comedian, was working hard.  For the Europeans I was with, his trying to get us to yell and scream and wave our hands for his prizes, seemed very "American".  I still haven't worked out whether I should be insulted by that or not.

Then they show you a previous episode to let you know what the show is about (because with those ratings, it's pretty clear none of us have seen it). It wasn't the pilot, though, which presumably would have explained the premise better than a later episode.  They may not have shown the pilot because it got really bad reviews for being racist and sexist.  On the other hand, maybe this later episode was funnier than the pilot.

At long last, the cast is introduced!  And it's a good cast.  Seth Green, Giovanni Ribisi, Peter Riegert and Martin Mull.  In the past all of these actors have proved how funny they can be.  And they work hard to make the audience laugh.  There are some funny lines and Martin Mull has a great one about the guest star.  The warm-up comedian is trying his best and the people in front of me laugh at every take, very genuinely.

But it was a long night and the only food offered is a brownie and water, and it was hard to laugh the third time you heard something that was only half funny to begin with.  And the episode resolved itself with a fart joke.  Funny, yes, clever, no.  Ken Levine would say that much of the humor was not based in reality.  Who doesn't fart in front of their husband for fourteen years of marriage?  Not anybody I know.

And that's the play-by-play of my first sitcom taping.

Nano Update, Day 3:

Plot?  Main character is remembering when he first got together with his girlfriend

Word Count? 3778

Missing my honey

I don't usually write about any trips I take until I am home, as I don't want the bad guys to know that my dust bunny collection is alone and unprotected. But for this trip to LA, I left my honey at home to keep everything safe.  We will be apart for thirteen days.  I know I wrote somewhere that our previous record time apart was eleven days.  (So, if you do the math, this trip is two days longer than that one!)

Before I left, I told him that I would miss him a lot.  He replied, "Yeah, you'll be so busy, you'll barely have time to miss me."

We were both right.  I miss him terribly and wish he were here on this awesome vacation I'm having.  On the other hand, I have been incredibly busy here, and the days are flying by.  I can't quite believe that I will be back home in less than 48 hours.

Just some of the things that I have been doing that have kept my head spinning: swimming, going out to eat (dinner four times, breakfast twice), riding my borrowed bike, seeing friends, cooking salads, standing in a very slow line at the post office, walking and/or jogging every morning, going to a weekend writing seminar, watching a sitcom get taped, putting down new paper in some old kitchen drawers, hiking, getting a little lost while hiking, taking a car to get it washed, driving up the coast an hour and a half, handing out candy to Halloween munchkins. . .

You can see why my honey thought I would be too busy to miss him.  Nevertheless, I am going to be really happy to get a big hug tomorrow night!

Nano Update, Day 2:

Plot?  The main character had a surreal interview at a coffee shop.  Best question:  "What's your take on flavored shots?  For or against?"

Word Count? 3540

Tidepools

Yesterday I had the wonderful experience of wandering around a tide pool at low tide.  I haven't done that in ages and it reminded me how much I miss the ocean.  Normally on my trips to LA I take walks along the shore with my feet in the water and I take a swim if the water is warm enough.  But this was different.  I was further north along the coast, where the shore is narrow and rocky.

This time I got to see starfish, sea anemones, a hermit crab, various birds, and what was probably a sea lion (it was too far away to see whether it had external ears or not).  If you look closely at the photo above, the orange starfish is eating a mussel very slowly.

We were a bit mean and bothered this sea anemone enough to make it close up to protect itself.

I love the shell camouflage!

We wandered around the pools, trying hard not to step on any living thing, and after we had our fill, we swam in the ocean.  It was cold, but we had a good time, catching a few waves while we adjusted to the water temperature. Probably the last swim of the season, but very fun!

Changing the subject, throughout the month of November, I will be ending my blog posts with two tidbits of information from my new novel.  I'll give you all a plot point and the previous day's word count.  Although I need to write at least 1667 words per day on average in order to "win" nano, I am aiming for 3,000 words per day so that I finish with a 90,000 word novel, more a normal length.  There are many days that I won't make it.

Nano Update, Day 1:
Plot?  The main character has just lost his job.
Word Count? 1697

Nanowrimo!

Warning:  I'm very excited, so this post is going to require many exclamation points!  It's the first day of November and that means the beginning of nanowrimo!  Today and every day for the month of November I will be trying to write at least 1667 words of my new novel.  Wow!

Although I started writing as an adult in 2003, it wasn't until 2007 that I participated in the craziness that is nanowrimo.  (That was my last year-long leave, for those of you keeping track.)  My novel that year wasn't that great, but the fact that I completed a 50,000 word novel made me feel like I really was a writer.

I have participated every year since 2007 and have only failed to finish once. (Mysteries are hard to write!)  The novel I am trying to revise for rejection is the novel I wrote in 2008 and the only attempt that I have let anyone read.

There is a large community out there for nanowrimo, creating a ton of support and encouragement for all us wannabe writers.  For me, it is wonderful!

However, in the spirit of being fair, there are those that are not fans.  In this post, the author feels that the world doesn't need any more bad novels. Apparently, editors and agents are already regretting the onslaught of bad writing they will have to wade through.  The author thinks that we should focus on reading rather than the selfish act of writing.  While I agree we should all read more, I must respectfully disagree with her idea that nanowrimo is not a good thing.

My novel this year is unique in that I don't really have a plot, but I do have a title!  I've never had a title before I even started writing!  And because I have the time this year, I am taking the opportunity to attend the Night of Writing Dangerously, a nano fundraising event in San Francisco.  

In order to attend the fundraising event, I had to set up a fundraising page.  I set it up like Kickstarter, so people can influence my 2013 novel depending on how much they donate.  I'll be sending out the link to my family and friends, but if you have any interest in seeing it, click here.

If you do go to the page, there may be a large box imploring me to upload videos or photos.  Please ignore it.  At the moment I'm not sure how to make the page look exactly like I want it to, but I'm working on it!  Of course, fixing the page will have to get in line behind the task of actually writing the novel.

Wish me luck!