Declaring Myself

I am back.

I am here with a specific intent.

I am here to declare my intention to participate in NaNoWriMo for 2011.

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask?

Well, mysterious voice in my head, it is National Novel Writing Month. The details are here.

Every year it rolls around and I toy with the idea of giving it a try, but always I find some excuse to not take part. This year I'm going to try. I may not complete a novel, but my writing needs a jump start and having a definite goal seems like a promising way to get that boost. So I'm dusting off an old story idea that I've never really gotten very far with and just writing. The polish and research can come later. The goal for now is to just write.

So, you may ask, how did the first day go? Well, I fell a little short of the 1,667 word daily goal I need to hit to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. As of day one I am at 235 words. It's a start and it is 235 more words than I wrote yesterday. That is progress.

I'm Okay, You're Okay

I've got hand it to Roger Ebert, he's got a real knack for posting things on his blog that make me want to post on mine. This time it's a post about the response to his "Thor" review. I'm always baffled by how mad some people get when someone doesn't like the movie or book or band or whatever that they love. It's natural to want to share the things you love with other people, I'm certainly guilty of pushing favorite movies or TV shows on friends. And in my younger, less rational days, I might have been just as militant about my passions, but as I've gotten older I've realized that everything doesn't have to be for everyone.

It so happens that I enjoyed "Thor". Roger Ebert didn't. That's cool. I know how I feel about the movie, I don't need it validated by someone else's opinion. That's not why I read Ebert's reviews and blog. I read it because I find how he writes and thinks about film to be interesting. That doesn't mean I have to agree with every word he writes.