reduction

In his book, The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom writes:

The issue is reduction and how best to avoid it. 

Often our way of understanding or representing ideas or narratives is to reduce them - to simplify them - to make generalisations and abstractions about them.  

One of the meanings of 'comprehend' is to contain or enclose, and sometimes the way we do this is to reduce something. 

Bloom says that we should eschew reduction, because what he is interested in is appreciation (of literature), and reduction diminishes its subject. 

you can see reduction happening in political and ideological discourse and all kinds of media, including books. Even if I agree with side A, in general, and I disagree with side B, I notice that side A will intentionally reduce (and thus misrepresent) the views, ideas, information expressed by side B. It seems to be something we just do. 

We don't see the need to really understand what the other side has to say /// instead, we have to denounce it, dismiss it, and attack it, or use it to attack them. 

As a believer, I'm often struck by how vitriolic books about atheism are, from start to finish. I don't see the point of a lot of those books representative of the 'new atheism'. Because, who is the audience? There are two groups that everyone can be divided into - those who agree with the message of the book and those who don't. Those who agree that God is a delusion, or God is not great, or that faith is, at best, stupid, and at worst malignant and destructive, and those who disagree and believe in God. But you're just not going to win anyone over by telling them how stupid they are or that their cherished beliefs are pernicious and destructive. So, it seems like these books must be written for those who already hold these anti-faith views, but if that's the case, what's the point?

I've got a copy of Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith, and on the front cover, at the very top, is a quote from Richard Dawkins, another famous atheist: 

Read Sam Harris and wake up. 

It's almost funny. I think he's basically addressing an audience of one. As one of the leading atheists he's giving his imprimatur to Harris's book. But it's problematic. Presumably, the people he's saying should wake up are people of faith, but I think that neither his book - The God Delusion - nor Harris's book, are written in a way that is going to win any believer over, and doesn't even really try to. Harris's book is extremely disparaging of Christianity, Islam and their respective scriptures. It's deliberately insulting and sarcastic. I never finished it, just like I didn't finish The God Delusion, even though I began them with great interest in what they had to say. 

I wanted to consider their arguments. But as I read those books, it became very clear that they weren't written for me. For me to accept and consider their arguments, I need to see that they know what they're arguing about. For me, as a believer, to seriously consider an argument against faith, I need the person making that argument to show some understanding and appreciation of what faith is. All I found - this is just my view - in these two books, were misrepresentations about faith and the things associated with it - that faith is irrational and that science provides the kinds of answers we need - that faith and science are opposed to each other. Tell that to the Arabian Muslims who invented algebra and ways of accurately measuring time, and translated the ancient Greek philosophical texts, including those of Aristotle, and made many more discoveries, during the European medieval era, sometimes known as the dark ages. Those advances led to the rennaisance and the scientific revolution and then to modern science. One of the reasons I give that as an example, rather than something related to Christianity, is that I'm a Christian and I want my argument to be rational and based on facts rather than defensive and reactionary. 

To have a dialogue, some kind of understanding or common ground has to be established. If you're not going to give any credit to my view and are going to consistently attack it and try to discredit it from start to finish, it's not just that I refuse to entertain your view, it's that I can't. You're invalidating me and saying I'm stupid - saying that my ideas about reality are ridiculous and delusional - but I'm incapable of taking that view, for obvious reasons. So, I can't hear your argument because it's based on false premises. 

Of course, there are some people who really appreciate books like The End of Faith and The God Delusion. It's interesting to look on goodreads and see how polarised the reception of these books is. There are a lot of 1 star reviews and a lot of 5 star reviews....but I discovered something fascinating when I went through and read some of the 1 star and 5 star reviews. Especially for The End of Faith, a lot of the 1 and 2 star reviews were written, not by believers, as you might expect, but by atheists/ agnostics/ sceptics, who disagreed with different aspects of Sam Harris's approach and his argument. Actually, most if not all of the bad reviews were in that vein....some of them may have been believers, but didn't explicitly say so, but a lot of them explicitly stated they aren't, and the criticism was of the argument made in the book, not the idea that we should question and critique faith, religion and God. 

I couldn't find any five star reviews of the book written by believers, but that's only to be expected.  

acting in good faith

something I've been doing more of lately is reading books and articles that I disagree with. 

everything is open to question, but it's possible to be sure about some things. 

when there's an apparent contradiction in a narrative or an argument or whatever, we generally think that it undermines the message, but what we see as a contradiction could also reflect our level of understanding. 

apparent contradictions can be an indication that we need a more nuanced understanding - that we are seeing circumstances and issues in a too simplistic way. 

One of my favourite illustrations of this is an example from the Old Testament. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah before its people (or most of them) were carried into exile in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel (2 of the greatest Old Testament prophets, who were also contemporaries) were prophecying that Jerusalem was going to be conquered by the king of Babylon and that Zedekiah and all the people of Jerusalem were going to be carried into exile in babylon. Zedekiah actually locked Jeremiah up because he wasn't happy about this message, which makes sense given that Jeremiah was prophecying not only the exile of the people, but the downfall of Zedekiah. 

A bit of background though....Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded Jerusalem, taken its king into exile, and it was he who had set Zedekiah up as the king of Judah, but with the condition that he was under the authority of Nebuchadnezzar. But Zedekiah had begun to plot against Nebuchadnezzar with other states. So, one of the subtexts of Jeremiah's message is about acceptance....stop plotting and rebelling and accept the situation you're in. And after nearly all the people of Jerusalem and Zedekiah had been carried into exile in Babylon, Jeremiah continued to convey a similar message in his prophecies. He told the people that, although they would eventually return to Jerusalem, it wouldn't be for another 70 years, so they should settle down in Babylon - make homes, establish relationships, assimilate. I think part of the lesson that God was teaching them is that their relationship with him, and their privilege as God's people, was not about material things - the temple, the rituals, etc that could only be accessed in Jerusalem. They thought being in exile was the end because they had lost everything that they considered good. 

This is how this relates to contradiction ➝ In his prophetic message Ezekiel had said that Zedekiah would die in Babylon but he would not see Babylon. That seems like a contradiction, but it's exactly what ended up happening. When Nebuchadnezzar once again laid seige to Jerusalem and ultimately took control, because Zedekiah had broken his oath of allegiance by plotting with the king of Egypt and other kings, the king of Babylon was particularly brutal in his punishment of Zedekiah. That seems to have been the way though, in those times. Earlier in Israel's history, Joshua was brutal in his treatment of the kings that fought against Israel and lost. 

Zedekiah and his men tried to escape, but he was captured and Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah's sons put to death in front of him and then blinded him, carried him in chains to Babylon, where he lived the rest of his life in prison. So, what seemed like a contradiction was not. He didn't see Babylon, but he died there. 

something interesting I discovered....the Japanese word for contradiction contains two characters /// the first character means 'spear' || the second character means 'shield'. 

სიბრძნე

Multiple times in the book of proverbs, wisdom is referred to as female, using the pronouns 'she' and 'her'. 

Wisdom is described as being more valuable than any amount of money, and the key to real success, peace, stability, well-being. 

Wisdom is also very close to God. Proverbs says that:

The LORD founded the earth by wisdom
and established the heavens by understanding. 

As seen in this quote, wisdom and understanding are often paired in the book of Proverbs. 

Wisdom existed before anything else - from the beginning: 

From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, before the earth began.

but there's something interesting. Wisdom played a role in the creation, which is described as follows:

[when God created the world] I was a skilled craftsman at His side, and His delight day by day, rejoicing always in His presence. I was rejoicing in His whole world, delighting together in the sons of men.

so, that breaks the rule about always calling wisdom female, because wisdom was a skilled craftsman. and when you look up the Hebrew lexicon, the word for craftsman is definitely singular and masculine. 

It's mysterious. Of course, wisdom isn't always referred to as female in the book of proverbs. Sometimes it's referred to as a quality or characteristic that we can possess, like knowledge and understanding. But every other time it's personified (which it is a lot), besides this verse, it is referred to as female. 

What it tells me is that wisdom is not limited in the way that mortal human beings are. It is personified as female for a reason, but it's figurative, not literal. Both males and females can be wise. This is all obvious. Something else that may be a bit more controversial but is probably just as obvious is that God is neither male nor female. Even though God is often referred to using the words 'He, His, Him', and that is done for a reason (just like wisdom is referred to as female for a reason), God is not male. God is beyond and above male and female /// He created both man and woman in his image....so women are equally created in God's image, which means that essential feminine characteristics are a reflection of God's characteristics just as essential masculine characteristics are, and essential human characteristics are. 

There are also passages in the Bible that describe God in female terms. A couple of examples:

Deuteronomy 32:18 - 
You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Isaiah 66:13 - 

As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.

điểm

we constantly encounter the end of our lived experience. the power that writers wield is the opportunity to address the reader at that point, because, whenever we read, our whole life so far has led up to that point. 

same with writing. as I write this, writing it is the most recent thing I've done. 

I think my writing actually involves more reading than writing /// that's why I write so slowly. I read over what I've written again and again and then respond to it. 

so, the writer writes at an end point, and the reader reads at a different end point, but in some ways, it's the same point - the reader and writer focused on the same thing. 

preferences

It always interests me, how my views about literature differ so markedly from the scholarly consensus, especially when it comes to the issue of ranking books and writers. Maybe ranking is something that we ought not to do with literature || that's a question for another time || but we do rank literature, and it always seems like I see things differently from the experts. and ranking is the main issue. if some literary scholar - say Harold Bloom - made a list of the books and wrters that he thinks are canonical or valuable, I'm pretty much in agreement with what he writes. It's only when he, or any other scholar, starts to say X is better than Y, that I find myself disagreeing. 

I've written about some examples before....Bleak House is regarded as Dickens's best work, but I don't think so. I much prefer David Copperfield...and guess what - that was Dickens's favourite of his own novels. I've never even finished Bleak House, and I've read around 4 or so of Dickens's other long novels, and I enjoyed them enough to finish them. 

And then, with Dostoevsky, there's virtually universal agreement that The Brothers Karamazov is his best, but, again, I don't think so. I have read Karamazov, and it was pretty good, but, in my view, not as good as The Idiot or Demons (aka The Possessed). Those were powerful and passionate, but Karamazov is more philosophical. I like the fire. That's why Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel and I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy. 

Another example is Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. It's held in such high regard by the experts. It has a fairly good claim to being the first real novel, as we understand novels, (although, ironically, it can also be read as a story about a man who goes mad from reading too many of that era's equivalent of the novel - the romance....so in many ways it's a critique of the novel). Quite a few writers and scholars regard it as being not only the first novel but the best ever. Harold Bloom writes this about the book and the author: 

The combined influence of Cervantes and Shakespeare over-determines the entire course of subsequent Western literature. A fusion of Cervantes and Shakespeare produced Stendhal and Turgenev, Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn, Dostoevsky and Proust. (from Genius: A Mosaic of one hundred Examplary Creative Minds (2002) 

Given how highly Bloom rates Shakespeare, this is quite a statement.

I've read Don Quixote and I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. It's not one of my all-time favourites. If my preferences matched the scholarly consensus, I think it would be one of my favourites. Same with War and Peace. I was surprised how readable War and Peace was because it's kind of a byword for long and daunting literature. It's definitely worth reading, but I probably wouldn't rate it as highly as the experts. Like Don Quixote, some people regard War and Peace as the best novel ever written, or at least in the top handful, and Leo Tolstoy is among the handful of writers that are the best of the best. 

But it's not just that my preferences differ from literary specialists. A lot of people besides the experts, prefer Tolstoy to Dostoevsky and prefer Karamazov to Dostoevsky's other novels. 

I wonder why we expect that there should be a consensus about these things. Maybe it's me...maybe most people do have views that reflect the consensus, but if the consensus was so clear and absolute, it probably wouldn't change over time, which it does. For example, most people, including literary scholars and critics, now regard Frankenstein as being one of the classics, but for a long time, it wasn't taken seriously. 

so what

I thought I would write a post about things I dislike in academic or non-fiction texts. I'm not going to name texts or writers. 

One thing I don't like is when writers assume that terms we use now meant the same thing in earlier historic periods. I think writers make this mistake when they're too focused on a particular argument they're trying to make. So, they'll grasp at anything that supports their argument. It seems like an insight to them. They think - no one has seen this before because they haven't viewed things from my point of view. And maybe they're right, but why I dislike it when writers do this is that they seem to rely as much on these kinds of movements in their argument as they do on more intuitive and reasonable points - points that a general reader - i.e not a subject matter expert like themselves - would probably agree on. So, they lose me because they're trying to make everything about their issue or area of interest. I suppose that's what you're meant to do when you write a book. But I think the best argument is one that gives the impression of being balanced and gives most weight to points that seem reasonable, instead of issues that are a bit obscure. Delving into obscurity might seem to reflect intelligence and insight, but it can also undermine your argument. 

The other thing I dislike - this one I absolutely abhor - is also related to the writer's perception of their own insight. This one is where the writer does a kind of scholarly detective work - consulting weather charts, diaries, historical records, as well as the literature itself - to then present their argument about what a famous writer's works 'really' meant - what they were actually writing about. This makes me want to scream for three reasons:

1. One of the main factors that endows literature with great power and meaning - what makes it literary - is that the meaning is indeterminate. When you read a good book or a great book, it speaks to you personally...it's like having a relationship. There's a creative tension between authorial expression and reader impression. Any claim that is supposedly definitive, about what the text 'really' means, shows a lack of understanding of the nature of literature. 

2. It's deeply disrespectful to the original writer. 

3. It's very self-serving. The later writer who is presenting their case, often in the form of a purported biography, is claiming some kind of special insight - into not only the works of the author but the author him or herself - that everyone else has missed. I think sometimes scholars can reasonably make that claim....there are some very good and very insightful biographies of great writers. and there's nothing wrong with making claims and backing them up with evidence, but it's that particular approach - the 'detective like' approach that yields supposedly authoritative assertions about what the literary text means, that I don't like. 

આર્ટવર્ક

What is it that makes good art? I don't know but I know that the art I like is simultaneously very realistic and very unrealistic - for example, the work of Claude Monet and Malcolm Liepke. 

in very early primary school - kindergarten, I think - my teacher told my parents that she thought I was artistically gifted

I've never been good though, at art in a conventional sense. I can't draw or paint things that look real. but then, what I've come to realise is that I don't want to draw or paint things that look real. 

I do want to have technical skills though, and I'm trying to develop them by practicing. 

I think art really has to be created in a state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls, 'flow'. It can't be done as a kind of chore, even though we call them art works. 

I've noticed that when art-tubers do a time-lapse of themselves creating an artwork with a voiceover where they talk about different subjects, artistic and not, when they tell you in the description box how long the work actually took, it's often something like 8 hours. 

I was kind of surprised when I first saw something like that because I've seen someone who had had a lot of practice using a tablet and software to draw and created her own OCs (original characters) and animations, etc, and it looked like one of those time lapses...she kept moving between layers and working on different parts, and images kept appearing and disappearing. It was all very fast /// so when I first saw one of these time lapses, I didn't realise it was a time lapse, but then I read underneath the video ￫ actual time to create artwork: 8 hours. 

I don't really get that. I get bored if something takes longer than 10 minutes to draw. But then, when I think about the idea of flow, it makes sense. In the state of flow, you lose all sense of time passing because you're fully engaged in what you are doing. 

Being in a state of flow is the only way to draw or paint anything intricate or technically challenging because the state of flow removes that sense of challenge...it's as if you're completely at peace || you're not stressing about how you're going to do the art work...you just systematically proceed with it, but not in a mechanical way // there's a sense of ease, comfort, joy, even if the drawing/ painting requires a lot of 'work' or is very detailed. 

judgement

strength and weakness....I think at certain times in my life, in certain contexts, when I was part of certain groups, I may have been regarded as weak || and then you get treated differently /// you're not really important

the problem is - and I can't help this - there's something in me that is profoundly strong - something potent and powerful

but when that doesn't translate into the results some people are looking for, they see you as weak, and they're right, but it's not that simple

مسیر

it seems hopeless. the number of compounded problems automatically negates any solution

deceptions

 there are so many deceptions....'across the universe' by Kurt Cobain, when it's actually by Seether || great version though \\\ then Nirvana's 'heart shaped box' by Lana Del Rey, but it's really by Hayley Richman...again a superb version. 

my favourite version of 'heart shaped box' though is the one by Kala Rose. 

Божа!

Spoiler alert:

God wins. Without a doubt, without qualification, without question. 

लिहीत रहा

I keep having to change tactics to keep working on nanowrimo. Like, the other day, I felt like the main theme I had been writing about was becoming kind of exhausted. Then I wrote a bit more about that theme and realised that there was an overlapping theme that was also important. When I say 'important', I mean, in my life. because, that's something else I've found with this project - I'm basically writing about my life. 

but then I found that that new theme kind of petered out as well. there's a lot more that I can write about it, but just not yet. I've introduced the theme and, for now, that's all I want to do. 

So, then I had another idea about how to proceed. my work is divided into chapters, so I had the idea of working on each chapter separately - reading through the chapter and then adding to it, and doing that for each different chapter. I didn't want to start at chapter 1 though, so I decided to start with chapter 7, which is the final chapter I've worked on, although not the final chapter I have in mind. 

Why I say it's not the final chapter I have in mind....I had this idea of structuring my novel around a series of ideas or stages, and I wrote those ideas at the start of the chapter. So, after chapter 7, there are 2 more chapters where I've just written a single word to represent the idea that chapter is going to be about. 

as it's developed though, it's been more chronological - each chapter is primarily about a phase in my life and about an idea or movement secondarily, and I've been pretty flexible about the idea aspect. 

before I started working on each chapter separately, I moved 1 or 2 passages around so that it was more chronological....because I've been working on it ad hoc, I've sometimes written something about different stages in my life in the same chapter. I've probably still done that a little bit. After all, I wasn't planning on making it chronological from the start; it's just come out like that, and, for the moment, that's what I'm doing, but I could change again. Like I said, I have to keep changing tactics. 

тыгылып калды

 I felt kind of stuck in the last couple of days with nanowrimo. I just felt like - I've been writing all this stuff about the theme that my novel is about, and I'm not that motivated to write more about it, because, as it is - in the form that it's in - it's not that great. I suppose it's interesting. I don't really know. I'm probably not the best judge. 

but I thought....I'll just see where I can add a bit more, just to get something written. that's an interesting thing about the way I'm writing this ⇾ I don't pick up from where I left off. I tend to read what I've written and then add stuff in at different points. It's getting a bit confusing though, because I'm forgetting the order of things....not so much the order of things but, what I've written || for example - observations that I've made...when I'm writing, I can't remember whether I made a particular observation before the point that I'm working at or after it....it's all kind of messy, although it's roughly chronological. but yes, I find myself writing something like - X is a recurring theme because it happened then and then, but the problem is the events I'm referring to come later in the story.

anyway, I broke out of being stuck, because I started writing about the same theme I've been sticking to so far, but then I realised there's a big overlap - I realised that there's another major theme infused and intertwined with the theme I've been writing about so far. so it just gives me more to write about. I don't know how I'm going to organise it all or how it's going to come together as a story, but at least I'll be able to keep writing. 

issues

I often find it helpful in dealing with my own issues, hearing what people have written or said about dealing with their own issues, even when (maybe especially when) their issues are very different from mine. 

encouragement that comes from hearing about someone making progress with issues that are different from yours, is a gentler kind of encouragement. advice that relates directly to the problem is often strangely ineffective or useless, or sometimes overly harsh. 

structure

I haven't been writing my blog as much because I've been working on nanowrimo. I'm not on track to meet the goal of 50K words by November 30, but I'm making steady progress and working on my book every day. 

It's different from what I've always thought writing a novel would be like. It's more like I'm writing a kind of non-fiction - depicting my life experience and my thoughts about it, but doing it in a way where I feel free to bring things together that weren't together in my actual life and also to introduce elements of stories from sources other than my life ||| but I'm not really doing so much of those more creative things, actually. 

especially in this first draft, when my writing really starts to flow, it's because I'm writing very directly about my inner and outer experience. that's why it doesn't feel like I'm writing fiction. 

I don't know whether it's convertible into a story/ a novel/ fiction. but I'm encouraged that I've gotten further in writing a novel (what I'm calling a novel) than I ever have before, and, all going well, I will keep going. I might even finish the 50K words by November 30. in any case, I will have a decent draft some time in the next couple of months. 

Hopefully I will be able to shape it as a story as I go - I will be able to fictionalise and storify it. that's what I've been consistently trying to do....that's the idea I start with, but, like I said, when I get going and write a few hundred words, what I'm doing is kind of like what I do in my blog ￫ writing what I think and writing about my life. 

it's different though, in that it has a structure...there is a kind of arc. my blog posts tend not to be related to each other, but the different parts of the book I'm working on are related to each other.  

it's still not really a story, though. 

In a way, writing this is like when I was learning to write a proper essay at uni. I was lucky enough to be taught how to write an essay by an especially brilliant linguistics scholar....she really nailed it, and I will never forget what she taught us because, as an arts student, writing essays was one of the main things I did, so I was able to put into practice what she taught us pretty much straight away, and I've been practicing it and teaching it ever since. 

but I remember the struggle /// having all my ideas about what I wanted to write about, based on my thinking and research...and my thinking isn't structured like an essay, and it was a struggle to manipulate it into that structure ||| I felt that tension. I still feel it, I think. 

and now I have some ideas about how to structure a novel and what a novel is, and I have my ideas about what I want to write about, and I'm producing text, but it's not in a novel form, but that's OK. I keep finding new ways to add to it. I wonder whether what I'm writing is even a novel. I suppose it must be because I'm deliberately conflating and distorting things. I'm using my ability to write in a kind of reflective, thoughtful way add to the text, but I'm cognisant that I'm writing something creative and I can experiment with ways of expressing stuff. 

This is one of the underlying principles of novels and other forms of literature - that sometimes we can express truth more clearly by making something up.

but authors do research to write novels. there's a seam of facts running through the composition. 

beginning

I've written around 1,000 words or so of my novel, which is not too bad. It's day 2 of nanowrimo, so, to be on track, I should have written 3,000 words, but 1,000 words is more than I've ever written of a novel draft. 

Something occurred to me as I was writing today, about the way the process of writing has changed dramatically since as recently as the 1980s. \\ because, one of the things I did was to go back to parts I'd already written and add to them. With word processing, writing needn't be a linear process any more. In theory I could develop my novel by expanding on various paragraphs that I've already written. I don't have to pick up from where I left off. 

and this makes a big difference to someone like me because I'm always rehearsing conversations and writing projects - going over and over them in my head. 

I was just looking at The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath on Amazon, and for some reason the paperback is heaps cheaper than the hardback, but it doesn't come out until December, 2020, and my unconscious reaction is, that's so long away - it may as well be years ||| but then I realised....it's next month // December 2020 is less than a month away now. 

I unlocked a badge on the nanowrimo website by updating my progress. also, I'm not as far behind as I thought...according to the website - nanowrimo - I would only need to write another 600 - 700 words to be on track. The ultimate goal is 50,000 words. now that I've logged my progress, I feel more motivated so I might actually write some more and update my progress today....there's just one problem (not that it really matters). I've logged that I've written 1069 words of my novel, but in a way, that's not true because this is a draft. It's very drafty. What I've written may never be part of a novel. but, like I said, it doesn't really matter, and, if anything, it's kind of encouraging....I could write absolutely anything, and log my progress and meet the goal. There's a lot that's exciting about the nanowrimo website actually....it has information about publishing your novel through Kindle Direct Publishing. That's encouraging for me, not because I want to learn about that but because I already know how to do it // I already published a booklet using KDP. But seeing that on the nanowrimo website builds my vision about what's possible. 

I just wrote another couple of hundred words, updated my progress, and earned another badge || for updating my progress twice in one day || It gives you a projected date that you will finish based on your progress so far, and adding those couple of hundred words brought my ETA back from February 2021 to January 2021. again, it's very motivating. No, I won't make the official goal of 50K words by November 30, if I keep going at my current rate, but January 2021 is just a couple of months away. When I think of writing a novel, I think of a long term project....like, it's virtually a truism the way that writers say that if they had known how much hard work and dedication it was going to take to write their book, they probably wouldn't have started writing. There's this idea - and it's something I've really built up in my mind - that a novel is like a heavy weight thing. but I haven't even worked that hard on it, and I'm on track to finish in a couple of months or less. Then again, it's a bit distorted // I signed up for nanowrimo on 6 October, and I wasn't strict about waiting until November to start writing...so, I've been working on it for a while. Still, I think I'm going to get more serious about it now, and actually try to write 1 or 2 thousand words a day. And getting started is the hardest part. That's always the case with any kind of writing. Like, when I start a new blog, it's so hard to write that first post, or if I haven't written for a while or if my life circumstances change a lot, it's always hard to write in a condition of newness.