the arc of time

for the first few weeks i was absolutely cruising on my novel. recently it has been a lot harder. i feel like i am in the weeds with no way out. the writing is definitely coming slower and harder. i am still getting the quota or more in every day (i wrote 2200 words yesterday) and i am now over 39,000 words. there is no doubt that i will get to 50K, probably by the end of next week. i am hoping to wrap up section one of the novel by the end of november and make that my wrimo. i will still hav three sections to write.

i have read several pieces on writing and they all say that “page 70″ is the hard part. the part where the story stops making sense, the freshness of the novel had worn off, and you start thinking of other stories to write.

but i am going to finish this one. i have been having a difficult week mentally and i am sure that is translating into harder writing too, so hopefully as that clears up the flow will come back.

either way, this book is getting done.

first and foremost, sorry for the dearth of posting. it seems that almost all of my creative efforrts, particularly at amateur wordsmithing are being poured into nanowrimo and there doesn’t seem to be time or space left for my first love, this ole’ blog.

but i wanted to drop in to give my people at marta some props. not to long ago i had a situation where i decided to go home early, and went to the bus stop waiting on the #140, whose schedule prior to 3:50 in the afternoon is a bit of a mystery and waited for what i thought was a bus to come by at 3:20. well it never came, and it never came and finally i decided to call marta. after getting hold of the customer service center, they called dispatch at north spings.

apparently the driver hadn’t turned on his tracking device, but they radioed him and he was at mansell claiming he had gone by the bus stop and there was no one there. of course, he must have come by super early; there was a another girl waiting even longer than me. anyway, i got a h.e.a.t. number (if you don’t know what this is, it’s the number marta’s internal tracking system uses - if you ever file a complaint with marta make sure to ask for one) and thought nothing of it.

yesterday i got a call back from marta customer service. the guy told me they had counseled the driver on the importance of maintaining the schedule and turning his tracker on.

i doubt anything will ever change because of it, but it was nice to be listened too.

i am going to run the ing georgia marathon.

it’s time.

more evidence that save college football, boxing is the stupidest, most pointless sport ever. ever.

and i hate the celtics.

well i am now passed the halfway point of the nanowrimo. in fact i blew by it today getting just north of 27,000 words in my novel, which i am titling minority.

i actually think it is going to be a ton longer than 50,000 words. it may end up being north of 100,000 by the time it is done and i fully do intend to finish it. this story is way to enjoyable for me to get out. i am loving writing it and learning more about my characters as they evolve.

interesting, but over the last two days i have been writing the introduction to the fifth protagonist and he is by far the hardest for me to write. he is a teenage black guy who lives off of bankhead in a pretty tough family situation. by far he is the hardest of the protagonists i have had to write. so trying to get in the mood i have downloaded and been listening to some music i wouldn’t normally listen to; most notable one clifford harris.

and damn it’s catchy. really.

either way, reco, i have decided on the best track for us to translate - ride wit’ me.

totally.

of course they will. i know that. most likely when they have to travel boston next week, but for now they look just damn unstoppable.

as, rs and i went to the highlight factory and watched the hawks just dominate the raptors, another playoff team from last year, which meand the hawks are now 4-0 against four teams that made the postseason.

and the amazing thing, they did it with a quiet night from joe johnson and with josh smith out most of the game hurt. j-smoove is going to miss two to four weeks which will be a real strain on the hawks. while “flip mo,” the combination of flip murray and mo evans has proved ever the great replacement for j-chills, the rest of the bench is a huge question mark.

woody must know this too because solomon jones seemed to play more minutes that jj in the second half (the game was never really in question,) i don’t think bibby came off the bench in the 4th quarter and even mario west go in on the action.

the reserves looked decent too, so i am cautiously optimistic we can weather the injury to j-smoove, especially with what looks like continuing improvement from big al, especially on defense and grabbin offensive boards.

it probably won’t be enough in boston, but by giving themselves a 4 game cushion to start the season, they are in a much better position to withstand 4 games without their defensive leader.

elections are rough. in the same way that sports can be heartbreaking, politics is too. there are no moral victories, there is no “consensus,” at the end, one side wins and the other loses. and just like sports when you win, the feeling is elation and exhilaration and when you lose it is heartache. in some ways it’s easier too with sports, since you can console yourself with “it’s just a game,” which you can’t do with elections; they are about making a choice about the best way to order society and construct government to achieve that aim. those are deep-held beliefs that run long, they are not trifles.

so i am definitely sad about the results of the election. moreso, because i wasn’t just voting against the other guy as you might have said i was in 2004, but i really believed in my candidate. a true hero and one of the most honorable men to ever serve this country, john mccain represented everything i wanted in a leader. he was a man who risked his own nomination to try to humanely tackle the issue of immigration, trying to do the right thing regardless of the personal costs. it’s a lesson i believe he learned when he was broken by the north vietnamese and something i deeply respect. i am and will always be proud of my vote and the man i chose to support. one of the saddest things for me to watch in the election was the demagogy that went on with respect to who and what john mccain is. i recognize plenty of it as inevitable in an election but it still was sad. when mccain conceded he showed his true colors.

all of that being said, i recognize the historical significance of president-elect obama’s victory and i celebrate it for what it says about what our country has become. as those of you who read my blog know, over the last year i have really learned to question and challenge my own attitudes and perceptions about race and i really celebrate obama’s election for what it means.

i wish so much that i could have casted a vote for america’s first black president, but in the end too much about president-elect obama’s ideology was too opposed to what i believe in, and i liked too much of what john mccain stood for to pull the lever that way. i have never voted for a democrat in my life for national or state office and truthfully there are very few for whom i could. obama’s tax plan sealed it for me.

so for me at least, i will wait and see. i really hope that president obama works to heal the bitter divide that exists in our country. i divide that is at least partailly laid at the door of a man i voted for in 2004, but also belongs in my opinion to those who let their opposition to that man reach proportions of indecency for some that i would consider to be mainstream even.

for my part i will support president obama where i can. i anticipate that on many things i will be unable to, based on what are very real and very honest differences in what i believe in versus what he believes in. on those issues, of which there will most likely be many, on which i disagree with him, i will try to be a respectful and loyal opposition. i hope whatever leaders emerge from the ashes of this defeat of the party i generally support will do the same, otherwise i will go back to throwing my vote away on libertarians.

either way my warmest congratulations go out to the president-elect and all of his supporters, including many of my closest friends.

in this latest front in the battle of ideas, you won, and you know have the right and the responsibility to govern according to them.

and that my friends is what makes me truly proud to be an american. we had a historic election, where the core ideology by which our country is governed changed dramatically, where a black man who 50 years ago wouldn’t have been able to use a water fountain that a white person uses, was elected and no one is rioting, no (sensible) person is stockpiling guns for the revolution.

i love this country and i know that it transcends any person or ideology.

i am today proud to be an american.

i have been writing like crazy. it’s probably why i haven’t been posting yet (that and i know i want to post about the election i am jut not ready yet) but i am having a blast with nanowrimo. i had planned to make it to 14k last night but i got inspired pretty heavily with a new characted, called “the neighbor” and i spent about an hour after the hawks game pushing myself up above 15,000 words.

i am really happy with my story too. so much so that i am almost losing myself in it the way i hope a reader would. i think it might be good. not sure yet, but it really could be.

i have settled on the working title “minority” too, based on the old blog post that is serving as the inspiration for the novel.

the hawks beat the hornets last night to go three and oh. this is a team many consider to be a contender for the nba title and one of the elite teams in the league.

for my part, what i am starting to love about this team is the grit they play with. they came out and jumped all over new orleans, especially after chris paul had to sit with two fouls. but cp3 came back in and he was unstoppable.

the hornets pulled ahead and last year’s hawks team, down 6 on the road against an elite team would have folded and the hornets would have put them away big. not this year. just like they did against the sixers they reached in and found some huge defensive stops and made some key baskets, including big threes from flip murray and yes, marvin williams.

wow.

it’s going to be an exciting season.

see you guys at the highlight factory on friday.

we had the best driver in the world on the 140. he was nice, happy and drove great. smooth as silk, faster than fast, he got us there on time and relatively easy. honestly you could ride up north point parkway when he was driving reading a book and not worrying about it too much at all.

not any more.

we have this new driver and i hate to say this, but if you asked her keanu reeve’s famous question from the atrocious speed, “can you drive the bus, ma’am?” the answer would be a resounding no.

to start with she is slow. if there were horse-and-buggies on 400 they would be passing us. then there is the gear shifting. the bus is constantly lurching because she changes gears at the wrong time.

but by far the worst is the braking. she clearly hasn’t figured out how much space she needs or how lightly or strongly to hit the pedal. this morning people were flying all over the place. two girls fell down as we were leaving north springs.

she cost me my 3g card too. it was in my laptop, in my backpack, on my seat when she decided to slam the brakes for a stop she didn’t even have to make. my laptop went careening off of the seat, flipped upside down and landed on the top, right where the 3g card was, snapping it.

i am sure my tech people are going to be really happy with it.

please marta, please, bring back my old bus driver.

i have been writing like a maniac.

nanowrimo kicked off at midnight saturday morning and i was writing at 12:01 am. i got pretty inspired and wrote more than 1600 words, finally going to bed around 1:30 am.

i wrote even more yesterday and have crossed the 3,000 word mark which i am pretty happy with. statistically i need to average 1,666 words per day to get to the 50,000.

i decided to write the MARTA novel that has been kicking around in my head for some time. ideally it will be an examination of racial attitudes and the challenges of simplifying and trying to quantify or judge those attitudes. ideally, it’ll be about what happens when those attitudes are challenged by external circumstances.

ideally it’ll also be an interesting story told from the vantage point of five people who meet riding the same bus to and form work every day.

ideally.

my favorite and much-maligned nba franchise, and the only atlanta team i root for, the atlanta hawks showed up at phillips arena for the home opener last night, having shocked even me, probably the most optimistic hawks fan on the planet, with an absurdly dominant win in orlando.

i was looking forward to good things as as, bk and i took our seats at phillips arena to watch the hawks take on elton brown, tech dropout thaddeaus young and the 76ers.

by midway through the first half things were going horrible wrong. the hawks couldn’t score a basket to save their lives, marvin williams was throwing up brick after brick after brick, and josh smith had a sum total of zero points.

by the half point of the second quarter the hawks had started whittling away at the lead and like micah hart writes in the official hawks basketblog the crowd never gave up on the team, giving them a boost of energy every time they put together a small run.

and then in the 4th quarter they turned it on. marvin had been benched, joe johnson decided once again to put the team on it’s back and carry them, and josh smith finally showed up to play (he finished with an impressive double-double.) even zaza pachulia (the only hawk who has an actual blog dedicated to him, incredible i know) came through with some big putbacks under the glass.

when the hawks tied and then took the lead, phillips arena went absolutely nuts. loud, raucous, flags waving, it was a sight to be seen. it honestly was even more energetic than the crowd for the opener against the mavs last year.

and when j.j. hit the three that sealed it, i felt like i was once and for all in a real basketball city.

so we’re 2-0 now having beaten two quality teams in two good wins.

some initial thoughts…

1. atlanta has the potential to be a great basketball town. the arena is amazing, the profile of the city screams for it. i think another playoff season advancing beyond round one might do it
2. there is no player in the nba i would rather watch than joe johnson. i know he isn’t kobe, or kg or lebron or chris paul. but in terms of sheer guts, character and determination matched with unquestionable skill, i will take him as my team leader over any of those guys
3. thank god we resigned josh smith
4. it’s time for marvin to put up or get out. he spent the second half on the bench watching flip murray.

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