NHL: Finals

The Ducks look set to capture the Stanley Cup tonight (Sigh, so much for going with my heart.). I'm sure that its babylonian captivity in the distant realms of SoCal, a period which future generations will no doubt call the interregnum, will be short lived. I somewhat suspected that the suspension of Chris Pronger would work rather like it did in the series against Detroit. As a motivating force for his teammates rather than a crippling disadvantage. Unlike the NBA, the loss of a single hockey player isn't such a big blow to a team. Even the best (and overworked) defenseman only plays around 30 minutes a game. And even then only as part of a defensive pairing. Aside from a goalie, they're the most critical position on the ice. But teams play four or six of them every game. The Ducks seem to have a real short bench and, really, they only have two or three defensemen carrying the team even with Pronger, but get away with doing so because those players are so good. The Mighty Ducks can - and did – weather the loss of Pronger by turning to their other defensemen and picking up their play a little bit.

Anyhow, the thing to note about this series (And which I'm not the only one to notice.) is the abyssmal ratings. It's the worst rated sports broadcast ever. And with the way sports ratings have been falling that's saying something. Hell, I'm not even watching it and I'm a pretty dedicated hockey fan.

Thing is, I'm watching it a bit right now – Ducks are up 3-1 – and I can't really understand why. It's a good, flowing, tension filled game as the Sens are trying to stave off elimination. There's not a hockey game I can point to that I've watched these playoffs that's really disappointed me. The quality of the on-ice product is markedly superior to what it was five or ten years ago when the Trap Ruled Everything Around Me. But I'm just not enthused. And if I'm not enthused then the league, for all Commissioner Bettman will swear up and down otherwise – has problems. Even this year's Red Wings seemed to be a pale echo of earlier teams. Even though they were the sort of overachieving underdog story that should have gotten me pumped – that's maybe not so surprising since they were the #1 seed again and we're stepping down from the Yzerman era and into whatever's next.

But I think, like the teams in the Finals, that's the main problem. They just don't have an identity of their own. I could name probably half the players on the Annaheim and Ottawa rosters – and there are some big names there like Pronger and Alfredsson – but they don't have anything to really distinguish them besides what's on the front of their jersey. They're just the sort of generic hard checking, dump and chase team that makes up half the league. At least ten years ago you had teams with real personality like the Wings with their Russian Five and the Devils with their Neutral Zone Trap and the Avalanche with their complete douchebaggery. You matched up against a team like Philadelphia and you could at least count on hating Lindross to get you out of your seat. Now? Annaheim has Chris Pronger, a player who nearly took the head off one of my beloved Wings and who's history as a playoff rival/roadbump goes way back to his days on the St.Louis Blues. I should hate the guy. I have hated the guy. But now, I just can't be bothered.

Maybe it's because I've watched too much hockey, maybe it's because I've cared too much in the past, I don't know. But the perception that none of it seems to matte is what's kept me from watching, if you ask me.

Anyway, there's doom and gloom in the air and solutions for fixing hockey are flying. So let me just re-air mine. What's hurt the game more than anything else has been chasing the mainstream American market. It's a niche sport that doesn't have a historical grounding in areas beyond the east coast and northern midwest. And, you know, Canada. They changed the rules, tried to phase out the physicality and fighting that drew a lot of people (including myself) to the game. They couldn't squash the trap fast enough when it first popped up and it hurt the quality of play, along with an explosive increase in equipment, training, and scouting which dragged the game down into the defensive muck (Defense wins championship but offense sells tickets.). But, more than anything, they overexpanded. Sure, they had an influx of foreign players to bolster the pool of player talent but it's spread over 32 teams now and that's way too many. Fewer teams means the better players get to play with each other. And, not for nothing, means the bigger markets like Chicago and New York have a better chance, percentage wise, of playing significant games.

If you ask me, and you didn't but I'm going to say it anyways, the league needs to contract. The last few years were a perfect opportunity to clear off some deadweight and shuffle around the players but I guess nobody wanted to deal with giving up the franchise fees and whatnot. But I say the league should immediately fold a few franchise – places like Columbus or Atlanta that really have no business being in the league – and then ship six fanchises – places like Phoenix and, yes, Annaheim – overseas to Europe. Create a European division out of those six teams to go along with the smaller Eastern and Western North American ones (I'm going to say 12 teams in two 6 team divisions in each, possibly less if they can get away with it. Trim some regular season games and a round off the playoffs, too, while they're at it.). The European division is the red-headed stepchild, of course, and the East and West will still play for the Cup, but afterwards, the Cup winner will play the winner of the European division for a new trophy as well (Probably in a 3-3-1 format, if need be.) as well as have the occasional “summit series” where teams will make an extended trip to the other continent. I'd be more inclined to watch that than the All-Star game.

There's already professional hockey in Europe but the point would be for the NHL to get into that market and to develop it because it's already where they're getting a lot of their talent from. Because what the league needs, more than anything else, is not just to develop itself but to develop the grassroots from which their fans grow. I'm a hockey fan because I come from a long line of hockey fans. Professional hockey's been in Detroit for years and years. But so too has PeeWee hockey and the AHL and the CCHA and other, minor hockey. It's ingrained in the landscape. The NHL needs to take advantage of hockey hotbeds like southern Michigan and Minnesota where they've already got a presence and look to develop them elsewhere. Europe – places like Russia and Sweden – seem like fertile ground for that. It's a slow strategy and one that won't pay dividends initially which is probably why it'll never be adopted but if the people controlling the league are serious about safeguarding it for the long term, it's the kind of plan they need to look at seriously.

De Chelonian Mobile

Jee-bus, but I thought we were in trouble on my whole, beloved evolution thing. Turns out there's even more fundamental disagreement about the basics out there. To whit, some 18% of people don't believe in a heliocentric worldview. Add in a further who didn't know and that's nearly a quarter of the American public who doesn't acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun. Times like this call for strong drink and stronger company. (Twirl of the derby to Mr. Yglessias and the finely Irish named Kieran Healy.)

I'm Going To Hide Under the Blanket Now

Oh crap.

For those who don't follow Turkish politics – and I know there are a few of you out there, don't be ashamed that you're different from us regular folks – Turkish folks crossing into Iraq, specifically the northern, Kurdish controlled regions is bad. Like, really, really bad. There are plenty of Kurds in Turkey, too, nd one of the nightmare outcome scenarios for a potential Iraqi civil war (I mean, besides the one they're fighting now, of course.) is that the Kurds in both Turkey and Iraq try to break off and form their own nation – Kurdistan or some such. The Turks (One of our NATO allies, by the way. And right on the doorstep of eastern Europe.), for a variety of reasons, would have no choice but to respond and that could tumble the whole region, not just Iraq, into chaos.

Anyhow, looks like it might not be as bad as it could be. If it's even true. But it's yet another troubling sign of what, exactly, our Iraq misadventure has brought to our doorstep.

Script Frenzy: Ah, Decisions Again

So, I've decided to throw in the towel – for the time being, anyway – on my former Frenzy script and strike out in a bold, new direction (I figure I can always come back to it, if I want to, and that some time and distance off to think through some of the snaggles I've hit will do it some good. I'm not just wadding it up and throwing it away – if you include my outline documents and notes along with the 5k of pure text, I'm at about 17k total, nearly enough to have won the Frenzy already. Even though some of it was written before and, thus, doesn't count.). One I might, you know, actually like to write. So, once again, I'm left with a dilemma as to which story to write. Again, I've narrowed the field down to three choices.

The first is the idea which prompted me to shift gears in the first place. It came to me – as if in a dream – while I was looking through an old sketch book. I came across some character designs for an idea I had one of those times I was thinking about starting a webcomic. I can only describe it as “8-Bit Theater done straight.” You know, knock off all the NES nostalgia, inside geekese and lighthearted humor and, at least at the time, I felt there were some interesting dynamics between those characters that could be explored in a more straightforward fantasy setting. Especially with regards to the whole Fighter/Black Mage relationship. I dropped the webcomic idea some time ago, but I think there's a movie there. This idea has a few advantages. First, I can crib from my old notes for the characters and potential plotlines. I don't need to start over and develop a brand new outline because I've already got one. A twist here, a tweak there, and some updates to some badly dated characters and idea and I'm ready to go. The value of that is not to be underestimated. Second, this is an idea for a webcomic I never got around to writing. You know what else was? My successful(ish) NaNo novel. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is.

My second idea would be to use one of my original trio of ideas. Namely, the one I groan inducingly titled “Inherit the World”. It's a slight twist on the whole superhero genre. I'd basically be adding some elements of tragedy and mythology by following a hero's journey. It's nothing major or really innovative, but I think adding the ideas of permanence to the standard superheroics pays a lot of dividends. And this story would be about a young, inexperienced, undeserving girl inheriting the powers of her mother, one of that world's greatest heroes – even greater than most realize – following her death. Unlike the previous story, I don't have a lot of preplanning done on this one. I have a bit of preparation but not nearly as much as I put into “First Kiss”. What I do have, however, is that opening scene just imprinted on my imagination. The one where the main character's mother goes out fighting in one last blaze of glory to kick the whole plot into motion. That's not exactly a detriment, if you ask me at the moment, because I think all the outline work I did for my first Frenzy script was part of the problem. I had too much going on and too much to cram into the script with very little idea what to do about it. This story, I know where it starts and where it ends (Sorta. The biggest problem I have with the script is that I don't know who the villain is and the end, of course, would be defeating that villain and establishing a new status quo somehow. So, knowing who the villain is would be kind of important, don't you think?), I just have to fill in the details in the middle. It might actually do me some good to start at that beginning and just work from there, bulling my way through the problems as they arise, and head towards that end point. It's not how I usually work but how I usually work is something like “First Kiss” and that hasn't exactly been working for me. But by working in a more linear, focused manner on an uncomplicated plotline, I might just get away from some bad habits and concentrate on what's working for me. Plus, you know, actually finish.

The third idea is probably the most controversial. Basically, in May, I decided to write a few practice scripts to get me in the mood for script writing. I'd never done it before and I wanted to work out the deal with scene shifting and sluglines and stepping off the director's shoes beforehand. So, I wrote practice scenes and a comic book script or two. But I also decided to make a dry run at the frenzied state. It only lasted a few days and I did it mostly to get what I saw as an overly ambitious idea out of my system. But, man, I think it's an awesome idea. It sprang out of reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Which is a great book to read if you think you're going to have some trouble slitting your wrists, by the way.). And it's all about war and occupation and culture clash while being completely unabout Iraq. It's ever so slightly sci-fi as it takes place in what I call my “Imperial Timeline” which is an alternative world where some strange things happen. It's an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a long time now, so it's very well developed even though I haven't written down a tenth of my ideas about it yet. So, it's a wide-reaching, ambitious story with a lot to juggle, exactly what I was looking to avoid writing. But, you know, it's the sort of thing I like to write and I've managed to find an angle that tells the story in a very “below decks” kind of way – channeling all the high drama and rise and fall of empire into the very personal lives of a few, very humanized, characters. And the sci-fi elements are largely background, in establishing the setting and backstory for the world – characters aren't running around with phasers and replicators or anything – once you get past the fact that it's set in a very, very different world with a very different culture, there's not much that couldn't be going on outside our windows (The only thing I think is somewhat advanced tech has to do with genetically engineering biological weaponry. But even there, the characters are dealing with the fallout from the use of those weapons in the last war, not running around modifying alleles and figuring out infectious vectors. It's, you know, the good kind of sci-fi.). I call the thing “Swamp Opera” because unlike the sprawling space opera the Imperial Timeline promises, it's very grounded and profoundly mundane – it's down in the muck, not floating around in space.

I'm really keen on the whole thing. Unfortunately, I went ahead and wrote some of it before June 1st so using it for the Frenzy would be cheating. I got about 5k into the script – which is part of the reason I set that as an early goalpost for my frenzy script – in only a few days. I can't use that. But what I could do is tear it up and start over. Consider what I've done as a first draft and make a new attempt. Keep all the notes I've written but delete all the pre-written scenes and do them all over. I'm not sure if that's entirely kosher according to Script Frenzy by laws but I am sure that the only one who has to be satisfied it is, in fact, is myself. I think if I don't reuse anything that I'd be okay with it.

At the moment I don't have a clear-cut favorite. I'm not even leaning towards one option or another. Each approach has something to recommend it and something to recommend against it, as far as I'm concerned.

Ah, what to do, what to do. Maybe work on something else until the spirit moves me again.

Script Frenzy: A Kiss Good-bye

Before I bid farewell to my old Frenzy script, which I've taken to calling “First Kiss” in absence of the imagination to think of anything better (I mean, sure, given the subject material I want to make some kind of vague allusion to the Virgins. To make much of time. Y'know, “Gather Ye Rosebuds” or “The Same Dying Flower” but that's way too pretentious even for me. “First Kiss” tells you everything you need to know right there in two words. It's not exactly poetry but it's utilitarian and that works.), I'd like to post an excerpt. I put a smaller snippet of this in my profile on the frenzy boards but, here's an extended version.

To set up the scene, this is the first meeting between my main character, named Arturo, an intelligent but withdrawn 11~12 year old nicknamed Artie, and one of the chief corners of the love polyhedron I was setting up, a precocious young hipster whom I've come to loathe named Rose. As the story goes, it's summer and it's hot and Artie's family has gone to the local Dairy Queen (Or whatever ice cream shop I was going to wind up with.) for a late night treat to cool off. Rose has spent a few minutes trying, in her mind anyway, to flirt with Artie and the little vamp has finally succeeded in seducing him into a conversation. Like most of the best stuff I wrote for “First Kiss” it's mostly dialog. Which makes sense since that's really one of my stronger points. Artie I don't get down so well in this piece but, honestly, his character's been bouncing all over the place. But I like this one because it's the part of the script where I realize just how much I hate Rose and that I'm subconsciously working to sabotage her – look for an increasingly annoying personal tic that I threw in on a whim. It's one of those little, unintentional things that makes things like Frenzy so fun. And I think it also points out exactly why I'm throwing up my hands on this script for the time being.

Sorry about the formating but my Blogger plays silly buggers with indentation and the like.

ROSE
You're Arthur Whittenberg, aren't you? From Ms. Havlosyk's 7th grade class?

ARTIE
Um...yes. Well...

ROSE
Rose Peck, from Mr. Cavaton's. Pleased to meet you.

ARTIE
Isn't that a 6th grade class?

ROSE
(Mock pretends she's flattered, batting her eyes and holding her hand to her chest.)
Why yes it is, how wonderful of you to notice. That was sarcasm, by the way. Are you often in the habit of pointing out the blandly obvious, Arthur?

ARTIE
Arturo.

ROSE
I do beg your pardon?

ARTIE
My name. Artie's short for Arturo. Not Arthur.

ROSE
Arturo Whittenberg?
(Artie nods. She barks a brief, extremely undignified laugh.)
Your name is almost as bad as mine. Why do you suppose parents do that?

ARTIE
Do what?

ROSE
Saddle their children with the most annoyingly pedestrian names. Mine, for instance, persist in calling me Rosie despite no end of correction on my part. I much prefer my given name, Rose.
(wrinkles her nose up.)
Rosie. It's horrible gauche, don't you think?

ARTIE
[something about a culture where people chose their own names, eventually.]

ROSE
Oh, that would be better, wouldn't it? I do like that. I think I was right about you, Arturo.

ARTIE
You were right about me?

ROSE
That you were intelligent. The boys in my class are such awful dullards. I need company to keep me stimulated
(she draws the word out coyly although the innuendo is lost on Artie.)
...intellectually, you understand. Most people just aren't on my level, it's so rare to find someone to have a decent conversation with.

ARTIE
I...well, I feel like that myself sometimes. I guess.

ROSE
Sigh, it just hasn't been the same since we got back from France. We visited Paris, you know. The lights, the color, it was fabulous. And the people there were so worldly and cultured, it was amazing. Really, though, the highlight of the trip was [some city in Holland]. There was this coffee place where we sat and discussed literature for simply hours. Have you ever been to Holland, Arturo?

ARTIE
Um, sure, we used to go to the Tulip Time Festival every summer. Back when my parents were still together, anyway.

ROSE
Tulip Time Festival?

ARTIE
Yeah, they have a parade, clog dancing, and everything. It's not exactly what you'd call entertaining but it's a fascinating glimpse into another culture.

ROSE
(laughing great big, horking snorts)
Oh, Artie, it's like we're in completely different worlds.

ARTIE
Um...

ROSE
Holland, Europe you silly, foolish, man.

ARTIE
Oh, no, Tulip Time is in Holland, Michigan. I've never been to Europe.

ROSE
Oh, you simply must. It's fantastic. Travel broadens the mind, they say.

ARTIE
G.K.Chesterton said before travel can broaden the mind, you have to have the mind first.

ROSE
Well, I don't think that's a problem with you.
(laughs.)
We travel constantly, you know.

ARITE
(Rose has leaned in close, really close, brushing up against Artie.)
Um.

Ah, bother. I see I left some of my author's notes in place of, you know, actually writing something. Really emblematic of the way the whole script looks, really. And, damn, but do I hate Rose. I want her to suffocate on her own vomit after she accidentally drinks a mislabled household cleaning product. Yeah... Moving on.

Script Frenzy: Talking Myself Out of It

My current script, that is, not the contest.


I just had a wonderful, fantastic, sweeping idea for a movie. One that I'm a lot more interested in now than "Script Frenzy Movie #1" or whatever I'm calling "First Kiss" these days. But dropping that script in favor of writing it would likely mean abandoning my word count and ceding one or three word wars. Starting over, basically, a week into the frenzy. I'm not sure if I can take that step.


Still, I'm not exactly happy with my current script. I think my idea was good but I'm having trouble making it work. It's a big ball of yarn at this point. I'm just writing extended, lazy, meandering scenes that aren't really adding up to anything of value. At 5k, I'm 25% of the way to the goal and there's no coherent structure and I don't really have a plan for making one. I haven't even settled on when, exactly, I want the story to be set. I have a much firmer idea than when I started, sure, but I haven't done enough research and the timeline's all wacky and my current favorite epoch might not even work with what I've wrote.


Most damning of all, though, I'm not really enjoying writing it.


You know, I think I'm going to go for it. If nothing else, the Frenzy spirit is about locking your inner editor in the closet; living in the moment and forgetting about the consequences. I'm going to throw my old script back into development hell and start cranking out a new one. A better one. I can always get back to it later, especially if I really get rolling on a script - I've been chugging along barely reaching a k a day, I can write much more, much faster, if it's not a chore.


The question, though, is which story's next...

Finite Crises

Ah, rough day today. Seems my life is falling apart again.

Anyhow, I did'nt have much time to devote to writing tonight, as a result, so I haven't been able to give my script the going over it deserves just yet. Also, a crash managed to steal about 300 words from my total. Nothing too major but I lost part of a nice little scene and I don't have any desire to write it now.

Still, I managed to pad my lead, as it were, even further. I checked my word count officially and discovered I was actually underestimating my total. I'm up to 5k now, which puts me square at a 1k a day pace and meets the little mini-goal I set for myself but didn't manage to tell anyone about.

I could probably do more, but I'm going to call it a night and pick it up tomorrow.

Cue "Eye of the Tiger"

Ah, that's more like it. I'm done with my nightly frenzy and I think I managed to get back to a 1k a day pace, here. I didn't think I was doing much until I looked up (or down, as the case may be) and saw I'd just written three or four pages. That's still awful compared with what I'm capable of but, let's face it, 20k in 30 days is a leisurely pace so I'm taking my time here. Still not completely satisfied with my results just yet. I'm focusing on the ancillary bits of the story not the core elements, and it's still not coming together. I only managed to write a few scenes, too, so I haven't made much headway. Ah well, I feel better because I wrote something. It's better than writing nothing. But, I think, tomorrow I'm going to find the time to sit down and take a good long think about this script. Maybe hit up the frenzy forums and see what can be seen. But, at the moment, I'm just slogging through it and I don't like that at all.

The Word Counter on the official site's up to 5.35 million now, by the way. Or about 400k more than it was earlier today when I wrote this. That's pretty awesome.

By the way, I don't know how many people are currently signed up but, last I heard, it was something like 7~8k. The number of words for everyone to have written 20k? Something on the order of 150 million. So, long ways to go.

Completely unrelated, didn't mention this yesterday but Steve Gilliard passed away at a saddeningly young age. He was one of the progressive blogosphere's leading lights and he'll be missed. Unfortunately, the vagaries of the blogosphere being what they are, he was just another name on the blog roll to me. I never read much of his work – I gather he really hit it big a little bit before my time, so to speak – and I never frequented his site or anything of the like. Reading posts like this, though, make me wish I would have.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Saw the film today. I've mostly been avoiding such documentaries as I tried to gear up for the Frenzy and all but my brother and aunt were raving about it during his graduation so it's been on my list for a while. It's not exactly what I'd call good filmmaking. It's not exactly doing anything fantastic with the form. But it doesn't have to. Like The Smartest Boys in the Room or Fahrenheit 9/11 or An Inconvenient Truth, it's one of those films that really makes you think about the message. You have to be a little careful because such films are presenting only one perspective, as fair or unfair as they try to be, but

In this case, what I think about is why, exactly, we have the technology to produce affordable, efficient electric cars today yet we aren't mass producing them. You'd think the security concerns about reducing our dependency on foreign oil alone would be enough to get the right people interested. But they're not. None of our major automotive companies are interested in pursuing this promising technology.

If there's one certainty, it's that gas prices are going to continue to rise. Oh, they'll dip and fall but it won't be long before it's $4 a gallon, then $5 a gallon. And that's in America where, thanks to a ton of subsidies and sweetheart deals, we've got the cheapest gas anywhere. I travel a lot in Canada, for example, and although the price per unit over there isn't much different that what it is in the states, it's sold in liters not gallons. So you wind up paying nearly 4 times as much at the pump as you would otherwise. I had similar experiences in Europe. Worldwide, a gallon of gasoline is a lot more costly. America has been insulated from this cost for a long time – we're still paying less, adjusted for inflation than we were in 1981 – but the day's going to come when the economic realities are going to make our gas guzzling tank-trucks unfeasible for the vast majority of people. And even hybrid cars with 200mpg (Not that far flung an idea as some plug-in hybrids are getting the equivalent of 180mpg right now.) are going to be an obscene luxury when peak oil hits. Electric cars side-step the issue entirely and can deliver their fuel for pennies on the gallon compared with gasoline.

I suppose the chief arguments against the electric car were in its limited range. And it's true, the EV-1s the film centers around could only go about 60 miles on a fully charged battery. And while you can argue that's fine for most people, it's true that it wouldn't be enough for me to, say, take a trip home or to my cottage up in the Bruce. But those early EV-1s were the first iteration. Their performance was subpar and they were expensive to produce but you could say the same thing about the earliest PCs, cell phones, typewriters, or even automobiles, I'm sure. By the time the EV-1s were recalled, the batteries had been replaced with superior models that gave them a range closer to 100 miles. And even with today's laptop battery technology – the vaunted Lithium-Ion batteries – that number could grow even further. Reportedly, by the film, to 300 miles. Given time and, of course, a research budget, the technology could have improved even further. Faster charging, better batteries, whatever.

The other objection would be the lack of a market. Well, there are still electric cars being driven today – RAV4s, and others from smaller producers – so there is some market there. Again, given time and enough of an advertising budget, that market could have been grown.

What killed the electric car, I think, was a combination of vested interests and short-term thinking on the part of the automotive industry. Yes, there's a lot of money tied up in gas fueled cars and the infrastructure that supports them. But there was also a lot of money devoted to supporting the horse drawn carriage. Innovation often requires a bit of pain and sacrifice as the economy adjusts but, if there's one thing the American economy has proven good at over the years, it's using and adapting new ideas and turning them into money hand over fist. If the auto industry took the lead here, they could develop new technologies and new markets which would spin off ancillary industries and create more profit than they'd be losing. The latest auto sales reports seem to show that people are getting tired of the large and fuel-inefficient SUVs and are looking to smaller and more fuel-efficient cars – my brother, for example, turned his nose up at anythign other than one of Ford's lone success stories, the Fusion, when he was car shopping. Imagine if there were a wide variety of electric cars in development for the past several years, just waiting to feed that demand. Designs that had been worked on from the already impressive EV-1. Built on that success, iterated and improved, and tapped into the current exploding market for small, affordable, fuel-efficient cars. But because the car companies weren't going to make back their initial investment (Which was a lot, although not nearly all that much compared to how much they spend developing new cars, in general. But, at the time, most of them were floundering) they dropped the idea altogether.

Script Frenzy: Winnie Was Hot (Progress Update Two)

The Script Frenzy site says that the aggregate word count of everyone involved – at least those who've bothered to update their word counts in their profiles – is rapidly approaching five million. I'm proud to say I've contributed just over 2k to that total. Or, roughly .04%. Which doesn't sound like a lot but considering there are at least seven thousand people writing scripts, means I'm actually somewhat ahead of the curve.

Or I should be. Like I keep saying, I don't obsessively check my word count. I know how much I had at the end of the first day – my biggest day of writing yet - and I know I've nearly double that so I figure I'm about 2k. I put that guestimate into my profile because it gives me an excuse to check in at the Frenzy site each and every day. Not that I've actually bothered to do much there but, you know, I'm trying to keep a toe in.

So, I have somewhere north of 2,000 words at the moment. Yesterday I added, maybe, 100.

Yeah, it was a rough night of writing. I just couldn't get anything done and what I was writing was utter crap. Not fun. When that happens you can either try and bull your way through it or you can throw up your hands and find something else to do. Yesterday, I found something else (Mostly, I fiddled around with my Pandora stations. 40 days 'til the music dies.)

Tonight, I don't know. I'm not particularly motivated to write but I've blocked out a big chunk of time and I'm going to hit the keyboard fast and repeatedly. 2k puts me exactly at the average pace of around 667 words a day and I can't be having that. At this point I'm contemplating switching scripts but I don't know.

Maybe I'm just upset because I've realized I'm doing “The Wonder Years – I Love the 90s! Edition”