All work and no pay (but you could run off to Camp NaNoWriMo)

Over at Truthout, they've picked up this excellent description of the conditions faced by US workers today, from "part time" college instructors, to working mothers, to blue collar workers, to the people who work in your local big-box chain store. The original article, by Monica Bauerlein and Clara Jefferey, comes from Mother Jones.

On a bright spring day in a wisteria-bedecked courtyard full of earnest, if half-drunk, conference attendees, we were commiserating with a fellow journalist about all the jobs we knew of that were going unfilled, being absorbed or handled "on the side." It was tough for all concerned, but necessary—you know, doing more with less.

"Ah," he said, "the speedup."

His old-school phrase gave form to something we'd been noticing with increasing apprehension—and it extended far beyond journalism. We'd hear from creative professionals in what seemed to be dream jobs who were crumbling under ever-expanding to-do lists; from bus drivers, hospital technicians, construction workers, doctors, and lawyers who shame-facedly whispered that no matter how hard they tried to keep up with the extra hours and extra tasks, they just couldn't hold it together. (And don't even ask about family time.)

I so wish I had written it myself. I have so lived every sentence and paragraph of this article, and I bet you have, too. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, because it holds the open secret to why ordinary people are getting kicked in the teeth by this economy. Fewer workers are working harder and harder for no increase in pay, while corporate profits are up 22 percent. (And the f***ers don't even want to pay taxes on their ill-gotten gains.)

But enough ranting for the moment. I'm heading off for Camp NaNoWriMo to play with my novel. You could go, too.

Soon to return to our regularly unscheduled programing

The rough draft of my novel, Sisters from Another Planet, has been completed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end -- and 70,575 words.

I will soon be posting more frequently on this blog, with maybe a little bit of time off to let my hands and elbows heal.

Time to write

I call this blog "Talking to Myself." It's sort of my practice blog. Once I've done a lot of practicing and feel I've got this blogging thing down, I'll start a real blog and try to get folks to read it. But I think there are two or three people besides me who read this blog from time to time, and I just wanted to let y'all know that I'm not going to be posting very much for a while, because next month, starting tomorrow at 12:01 a.m., I am going to write a novel.

Writing on

Posting here may become a little bit sporadic in the near future as I not only have a bunch of work to do on my house, but I am also trying to get back to work on Urban Legends, my convenience store novel. It's the first novel I started to write, during National Novel Writing Month in 2006. So, not knowing anything about what I was doing, I started right in on a complicated multi-plot novel. I have often said Urban Legends is what might have resulted if George Eliot had written a Naiad novel. Except, George Eliot  was really good at writing complicated multi-plot novels, and I am not--at least not yet. (If you're not familiar with Naiad Press, you could check out their Wikipedia entry. If you aren't into following links and doing research today, your average Naiad novel was a sort of Harlequin romance for lesbians.)

Anyway, I've been floundering around a bit, wondering what I am going to do with Urban Legends. It's a mess.  I tell myself that we learn by making messes. Maybe I should give it up as a writing exercise that has taken me as far as it can. But the truth is, I'm kind of in love with the characters, and I'm kind of in love with the idea of a novel about lesbians who hand out in a convenience store in downtown Oklahoma City. So I've been re-reading George Eliot's Middlemarch and Dusty's Queen of Hearts Diner by Lee Lynch, trying to figure out some stuff about how to re-build this novel.

Wish me luck.

The $6400 question

Hilda Solis is Barack Obama's choice to be secretary of labor, and perhaps her nomination is in trouble because her husband's auto repair business had to pay $6400 in back taxes. Or, according to this article posted on Common Dreams, perhaps Republicans are trying to defeat her because of her support for labor unions.

There. I did it.

The first draft of the third novel is finished. I needed 50,000 words by the end of the month, and I got 60,686. Or thereabouts. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but however sloppily, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And thus, I am one of the official winners of National Novel Writing Month.

Some of us from the local NaNo writers group are having our wrap party at Sauced, which is one of OKC's great hangout spots. Most of us have already crossed the line, but Jasmine is laboring along at 41, 696 words. She did start and throw away two previous novels this month. This seems to happen to her every year, but she's a genius and also types really fast, so I have every confidence she will win by midnight.

See y'all with regular posts soon:

What in the world?

When I catch the news on the radio, it seems that while I am trying to finish this novel the world has been going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

Truthdig offers a link to this analysis of the situation in Mumbai. Over at thenation.com, Robert Dreyfuss discusses where this situation might lead -- and it doesn't sound good.

Also at thenation.com, Barbara Crossette has the best analysis I've seen of the ongoing political crisis in Thailand, which has heated up once again.

Okay. Enough of the troublesome real world for a moment. I'm going back to the imaginary world that I need to bring some direction and conclusion to in the next one day and nine hours (give or take a few minutes).

And words to write before I sleep

Okay. Think I'm closing in on 22,000 words on the rough draft of my novel, and I still don't know where I'm going with it. I thought it was going to be about these women I used to know in another state, but it has turned into an incoherent examination of one or two of my deepest fears. I keep telling myself that the only way to learn how to write novels is to write them. Maybe I'm learning something, but at the moment I'm rather frustrated. I think I can catch up on my word count and make sense of my novel by the end of the month, but I'm not sure of it.

Several times a week the local writers group for NaNoWriMo meets at local cafes in order to work together on our efforts for each of us to write a 50,000 novel by the end of the month. One of our group has finished her first NaNo novel and is starting her second. Another threw out the project she was working on and is 6,203 on the novel she decided to write instead. We are at the Red Cup. We are eating good food and hearing pleasant music.

Sound like fun? It's not too late for you to start your novel.

A novel experience

I mentioned this a while back, but just as a reminder, posting will be slow around here for a while because I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month. I need to finish 50,000 words by the end of November. So far I'm at 14875 words, so I've got a ways to go.

Would you like to write a novel? It's not too late to start. Is it really possible to write an entire novel in a month? You can at least get a good rough draft, which is usually the most difficult part.

Erraticness to come

November is getting closer and closer. That means it's almost time for National Novel Writing Month once again. Thirty days. Fifty thousand words. Nothing to it. Well, maybe there's a little bit of something to it, because if I'm planning to crank out 50,000 words of fiction in November, I might not be writing very many blog posts. Just so you know.

Before then, I'm hoping to finish a multi-part series on the Electoral College. But there is also the Herland Fall Retreat coming up this weekend. So, if posting gets a bit erratic around here in the near future, don't worry. It will probably pick up again in December.

I do think I've got at least one excellent guest blogger who will be posting some material next month. And if you think you might like to be a guest blogger at Talking to Myself, you could email me. Unless, of course, you're going to be writing your own novel. Which you might like to consider, considering how much fun it is. Of course there is a sort of metaphor problem having a blog called Talking to Myself that has guest bloggers, but why should blogging be less contradictory than life itself?