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Sunday, December 1, 2002

News flash! People Avoid Socializing With Pessimists! Is that why everybody hates me? Is that why you don't comment in my web log? Wah. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

The funny thing is that psychologists generally concede that pessimism is closer to realism than optimism. Being rational means admitting that things are going to suck a lot of the time. But the screwy thing is that reality is set up in such a screwy way that realism is not a successful worldview. Optimism is the successful worldview. Ignorance is bliss.

Except when you reach old age. That's when the tables turn and the realists thrive over the optimists who can't understand why the happy, happy world is taking away their mobility, their loved ones and their livelihood.

Ignorance eventually catches up with you.

So what's the middle ground? Where do we find a balance between living the good life and accepting the truth of reality?

Did I mention that my novel has a happy ending?


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 2:10 PM

50846 words and that's all she wrote.

NaNoWriMo 2002 Winner

Can I get a "booyeah?"


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 12:00 AM


Friday, November 29, 2002

48 hours and 8656 words to go. I haven't gotten to the climax yet, but there was probably a little premature drip.

I had to scrape up a couple ot the aborted fetuses of unsubmitted K5 diaries to get this far. I hope I won't end up like Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry.

I have this horrible fear that I'll finish on the wire and the NaNoWriMo server will be too swamped to accept my submission. Then there's the possibility of random computer crashage, or I could get brutally arrested at tomorrow's Critical Mass. Augh! Save the outlandish worst case scenarios for the novel, doofus.

Thanksgiving wasn't so bad. I think the secret is to deal with the fam piecemeal instead of all at once. That is to say, I'm always overwhelmed by big social gatherings and the extended fam meetings tend to be one of those, but they're all pretty cool people.

I haven't told anybody in the fam about my novel, though, since I'm afraid that then someone will want to read it and, hooboy, that wouldn't be good. Repeat after me: The author is not the character. The author is not the character. And if you believe that, I've got this bridge that I'd like to show you...


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 12:12 AM


Sunday, November 24, 2002

I'm halfway to a novel here, people: 25,205 words down, 24,795 words to go. If I continue at the pace I've set during the last couple of days, I think I'll make it. Of course, my life is on hold until I do, which probably isn't a great idea, but, 'eh, artists gotta suffer for their craft.

I did I really good job with the scenes I wrote today. Putting characters into crazy, drug-induced rambling sessions full of foreshadowing and hidden truths is one heck of a useful plot device. I'm seriously considering putting my main character in an insane asylum for that very reason.

In other news, IU administrators are looking at porn.

And here's a funny math link.


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 3:13 AM


Monday, November 18, 2002

Here's a novel update for you. Word count: 14078. I'm perpetually halfway to where I want to be. Hmm... Story of my life, no? Well, there's still hope that I can pull out 35922 more words by the end of November, since I've certainly got that much more plot in mind, but that's not really the point. I'm meeting a lot of cool people and I'm actually sitting down and writing on a regular basis. Pretty cool.
[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 1:42 AM


Thursday, November 7, 2002

Okay, my word count still sucks (5270), but I've tripled the length of my working title (Malcolm Langley of the Sara Dimension). Oh, what the bloody fudge, something just munged up my novel's formatting.

Oh, and for the record, the inspiration for the name of the leading female comes from this running gag.


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 11:01 PM


Saturday, November 2, 2002

Current word count: 2482. Expected word count: 3333.

I'm a little bit behind, but not as much as I thought I'd be.


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 11:45 PM


Thursday, October 31, 2002

Official NaNoWriMo 2002 Participant

If I don't update my blog or post to K5 much during November, it's because I'm writing my novel.


[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 9:43 PM

The scariest web site on the Internet
[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 4:02 PM

Here's a picture I drew of myself. Most of the analogies here came up in therapy, so they probably don't make sense to anybody but me.
[comment] posted by Mark Wilson 3:59 PM

© 2002 Mark Andrew Wilson

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