Nanowrimo Day One

Posted on by Bill Chance

Ultimate goal – 50,000 words.
Daily goal – 1,667 words
Goal total so far – 1,667 words
Words written so far – 1,685 words
Words to goal – +18

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”
― Jean-Luc Godard

Writing in my Moleskine Journal outside the Mojo Lounge, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans

As I committed the other day, I am doing Nanowrimo – the National Novel Writing Month this November – writing a 50,000 word (small) novel in a month. Not necessary a good novel, or even a readable novel, but one of 50K words.

On October 31 – I came home from work and took a nap – getting up at midnight to write on the first hour of the first day. I have collected a series of prompts or inspirations – the first one was a snip from a Jean-Luc Godard film – the famous dance scene.

I hammered out 1,685 words, then tried to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I was so enervated by the writing I had trouble falling into slumber and had a worn out, tired day at work. But at least I’m on track for the first day.

Snippet of what I wrote:

I was mesmerized. The music was complimented by the chatter of the other diners and the clinking of plates and silverware, but the three seemed to exist in a reality all of their own. They were dancing in the diner but also living outside of it, away from it, beyond it. They did not belong there. They were style, beauty, and grace, and a… cool was the only way to say it.

They were the epitome of cool in the least cool place in the world. And the diner wasn’t able to understand… to appreciate the miracle that was inside it. Like aliens from a distant planet… no, they weren’t the aliens, they were the real people. The diner was the alien planet and they were the only authentic humans that had ever graced its grimy linoleum floor. And the diner with its oblivious patrons kept on slinging its grease completely oblivious to the miracle moving about the space in front of the jukebox.

I warned you – if I’m going to write 50K words in a month – it isn’t going to be very good.

Ignorance Is Strength

Posted on by Bill Chance

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

P-51 Mustang, Wings Over Dallas

A Celebration Of Markets

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Don’t forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimolous to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

B17, Commemorative Air Force, Wings Over Dallas

Never Surrender

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Alone

8 50 Caliber Machine Guns, Commemorative Air Force, Wings Over Dallas

Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer Of Worlds

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

B-29, FIFI, Commemorative Air Force, Wings Over Dallas

FIFI

The Heart Of the Great Ocean

Posted on by Bill Chance

“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Caribbean Sea

The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Caribbean Sea

Life On A Lifeboat Isn’t Much

Posted on by Bill Chance

Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
—-Yann Martel

lifeboat propeller

No Drink Was Strong Enough

Posted on by Bill Chance

“He was in Guanajuato, Mexico, he was a writer, and tonight was the Day of the Dead ceremony. He was in a little room on the second floor of a hotel, a room with wide windows and a balcony that overlooked the plaza where the children ran and yelled each morning. He heard them shouting now. And this was Mexico’s Death Day. There was a smell of death all through Mexico you never got away from, no matter how far you went. No matter what you said or did, not even if you laughed or drank, did you ever get away from death in Mexico. No car went fast enough. No drink was strong enough.”

― Ray Bradbury, The Candy Skull

Cozumel, Mexico

Rather Be Exact

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Galveston, Texas