When Reality Is at Odds with Ideality

So I figured that to actually achieve a goal of one million words a year, I would need to spend approximately one full hour every day. That is at a pace of 60 words per minute. The approximation of an hour is on the high end and the wpm is on the low end, giving plenty of room for error since I would have to take any pauses and breaks into consideration. An hour a day would would take too much of my time. I should figured this would have been a problem. But if I ever really get into typing nonstop for an hour, I’d probably break my daily quota. I find that inspired writing comes out at a faster pace and higher quality than writing that comes because I want to write whether just to write or to fill a quota or whatever. Often, when I drive myself to write, even if its ‘rambling’ undirected writing I can’t find a ‘go’ beyond a ‘stop’. There’s always a perfect place to stop and when I reach that point, I stop. There is no going on for me. I don’t feel a need to continue and I can’t because that is the end of multiple trains of thought. Even if it doesn’t read complete, or flow well, or even have a semblance of a whole, that is where it ends. Not everything is necessarily the same and would allow a large word count and the count doesn’t even matter. I think faster than I can write and I basically write what I think (although, the act of writing puts my thoughts into a certain mode it seems as if I am thinking the words as they appear at by fingertips) when I reach a point where I am essentially all thought out, there is no reason, no impetus for me to get going again. It is the end and that is how it should stay. I’m not one who believes in prolonging anything beyond its shelf life. That would be worse than beating a dead horse and that’s not even a proper metaphor.

I find that if I go on long enough, or if I stop long enough and start up again, I sometimes repeat myself, in a slightly different way. I’ve written and rewritten the same story multiples before and it always seems to get better each time. Tighter prose. Poignant sentences. I’m not one to use too many words when I edit and re-edit my own work. This also gives me trouble with papers and essays. I always find it hard to make the minimum page count. I find that I’ve said all I wanted to say, but it’s not ‘complete’ enough. I’m not necessarily a terse person, but I prefer to get my point across as simply as possible, unless I’m messing around or messing with people and use inflated sentences and ridiculous diction that pretty much looks like it makes no sense at all. I don’t enjoy using words that are too uncommon unless they seem right for the occassion.

If I had a story I wanted to tell, a story I didn’t mind telling in bad prose, in bad story telling form, with a bit of cringeworthiness to it, then I might be able to easily easily easily fill out the million words in a year. I’d tell multiple terrible stories, but I’m all storied out for now, of the terrible stories at least. Perhaps I should finish the rather ‘wordy’ story of Lore that I have been experimenting with? haha. Not likely. Well, maybe. It’s a possibility. At least I’d get through the whole plot from the beginning and get to the end that I had in mind. It’s been a year and a half since the story started and it has been nowhere. Perhaps I could just start a new story and ramble it out from there. I could just use that and then later rework it into something better. Eh.

If I had the means

I am not an ambitious person. I have no ambition but one and that is to be a good person. I don’t strive to be anything but that. Is this what I have taken from Taoism and Buddhism? That I can’t answer yet. But I have many dreams. Would those count as ambitions? If they do then a man with many ambitions has none. There are many things I would do if I had the means. This is where my lack of ambition comes into play. If I had the ambition, I would have done these things already, but these are things I would like to try just once to maybe see if I enjoy them or not. I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to do these things. They are not who I am or what I am about. Perhaps what I dream to do requires too much ambition to achieve.

If I had the means, I would make chocolate. I would make wine. I would make coffee. I would make ice cream. One hundred percent natural. I don’t just mean make, but actually learn about the process involved and perfect it in my own way to make smething that I believe is the perfect chocolate, the perfect wine, the perfect ice cream, the perfect coffee. And I don’t mean the single perfect chocolate or the single perfect wine or the single perfect ice cream. I mean something that just feels one hundred percent right, something that does not need to have anything added to it to be complete because it is already complete. I don’t be objectively perfect either, as people are different, but perfect in the sense of maximum satisfaction for the maximum amount of people, but altogether each indivual perfection is one perfection for everyone such that there is at least one perfect for everyone, for those who like coffee, chocolate, ice cream, and wine anyway. Why would I want to be the perfect coffee, ice cream, chocolate, and wine maker? I find it interesting the little intricacies involved in processes in making these which largely include temperature and other ambient conditions as well as the quality of the incoming ingredients as well as the quality of the production of the organic ingredient used to make the product. This means the ambient condition of the coffee beans, the grapes, the cacao beans, the milk in the cows and how they affect the quality of the product. I wouldn’t just research this about this but actually experiment with this myself. I wouldn’t buy the ingredients but buy the means to produce the natural ingredients myself. If I had the means, I would completely grown my own coffee, my own cacao, my own grapes, my own vanilla, raise my own cows. If I had the means, I would do this, and perhaps create the perfect chocolate coffee wine ice cream using my ingredients and call it ‘Chocoffee Wine Ice’ if possible. If not, I’d just call it ‘Snazzy Jazz Ice Cream’ for the heck of it.

500 words? Perhaps I set too high of a goal, or perhaps I find myself unable to continue after I feel I have finished.

Day One

So today is the first day, of the new year and of the Million Word Idea. I’m not sure what I hope to get out of it other than a million word in three hundred and sixty-six days. Is sixty-six one or two words? Is it cheating that I break convention to write out a number? Does it matter? Not really. I’ll probably write more than a million words, at least more than enough to cover any of the excepts to what counts as a word. Is a contraction one or two? What about he’dn’t’ve? Does that even count as a word? Or does it count as four different words? I wonder if I can contract “I’ll haven’t” to “I’ll’ven’t” and call it illvent. Ivent found a use for illvent though.

That brings up the question of whether or not made-up words count as words. I’d say yes, but then again, it might not matter. Might being the operative word since I enjoy using words that are made-up, completely or just a mash of other words joined together in a makeshift portmanteau, an ad hoc word. Botancork is one of those words. It has a somewhat broad but specific meaning, one of those things that I haven’t found a word for but botancork seems to fill that niche nicely.

Paragraphs are completely arbitrary and may or may not signify a change in thought, something I am predisposed to doing, often times mid-thought. Are some hyphenated words actually two words or do they count as one? What does the WordPress software say? What does Microsoft Word say? Should I just make a guestimate as the the number of words I have written? With x amount of words per line and y amount of lines, would that be approximately 300 words? Does guestimate have one ‘s’ or two? I think it looks better with one, kind of like a question. Perhaps ‘guestion’ should be a word. It’ll be a guess phrased as a question, a guestion. I guess that could be a legitimate word? Maybe? Or a more specific definition could be that an answer phrase in the form of a question when one is unsure of the answer and/or does not want to commit to the answer that they have given. ‘Guestion’ is a more legitimate word than ‘ivent’ and ‘illvent’, which are just informal? ungrammatical? contractions that have been stripped of their apostrophes. Then again, botancork is a contraction too.

Words are weird. In English anyway. And not just American English, but I won’t go into teh other Englishes because I don’t know them too well. There’s the British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, and all the other Englishes I don’t even know exist and all the little dialects of those dialects of English. Are there more dialects than accents? I wonder.
Hmm. I wonder if that counts as a word too? Are ‘um’, ‘er’, and ‘uh’ words too? What about fillers like like? Like is like a word if like it serves like no purpose to like the understanding of the sentence? Like if it brings no unique understanding to the setnence? Are redundantly sentences technically cheating word count? These guestions and more will never be answered simply because no one who would bother answering them would realize that the word count doesn’t matter, but it is a slightly interesting thinker. Then again, what constitutes as a unique understanding? What am I even talking about? Does ‘then again’ add something? Is it just two words for, ‘but’, ‘yet’, and ‘however’? Does that mean it counts as one word or does a specific word choice guarantee that it counts as unique words? Should there then be a word-idea unit count (is there a word for that? I think I mean to say morpheme, but since I’m writing this as it comes, I’m not going to bother looking it up in a dictionary. I’ll probably get sidetracked.) instead of just a a simple word count? Can this actually be reduced to a count of the simplest semantic ideas?

I wonder if parenthetical comments should count towards the overal goal. They are parenthetical and could, in essence (or should I say essentially?), be removed without altering the meaning of the surrounding content too much. Then what of the unnecessary clauses I put in between commas? Should I count those as unnecessary? Well, I hope this is the only time I’d ever uses these so generously. I don’t plan on using as generously, or even sparingly in the future. This is probably a terrible start to a million words in a year, and this is a leap year too!

Typing this in Notepad and not a word processor with spellcheck, I wonder how many misspelled words I have. Hopefully less than one per paragraph. Do misspelled words count as words? They most definitely should. It is not likely that a word could be so mangled that it becomes more than one word.

800 words. Not a great start.

Million Word Idea

So it’s been six months since my last post, because I’ve been moderately preoccupied with other things. Come the first of the new year, I will ramble (aka “free write”) several thousand words per day, ending up with one million words. This will be my million word idea. It’s worth at least a thousand pictures. These ramblings will probably contain elements common to my writing and turn up in or call back to other things. Seven days until the new year starts.

Wordplay

I love a good pun or a pun so groan-worthy that you can’t help but enjoy it. While I may not be quick with a quip, I do love a good spar with verbal wit and with long-running paronomasia. Wordplay injects the recommended daily dose of frivolity into anything. It is part of the reason I enjoy Pun of the Day and Irregular Webcomic!.

My all time favorite pun would be, of course:
I was wondering why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me!

This isn’t going to be a long post about logodaedaly (aka verbal legerdemain). It isn’t about anything at all, so I’ll just end with a thought:

What would a horse do if you told it to stifle?

Why are you a shoe?

Your response to this question is a key to knowing yourself.

Squirrels and Words I Remember Learning

Nature does have a way of making things work and camouflage is one of them. I passed within inches of a squirrel and did not notice it until I heard it skittering toward the nearest tree and then climb up. Squirrels tend to stay on the opposite side of the tree from a threat. As a passed by the tree, the squirrel kept its eye on me an scooted its furry-tailed self around to the opposite side, in what is perhaps, the cutest way possible. Squirrels are cute, regardless of their age.

But on to the more important stuff.

Most words I have no recollection of learning. Perhaps I read them in a dictionary or in some other book. I don’t know, but most of them I’ve never had as vocabulary words. However, there are some words I distinctly remember learning and there are also some words I don’t as-distinctly remember learning. Grandmother is one of the latter. It was probably the hardest first grade, or perhaps kindergarten vocabulary words. Everyone knew what grandmother was, just not exactly how to spell it because it was so darn long. I don’t think some of us realized it was just the words grand and mother put together.

Viz is one of the words I distinctly remember learning. I looked it up after seeing it often in, you guessed it, Robinson Crusoe. That is the first and last book I have ever encountered viz. I’ve even used viz as a username for a short while after that too. I don’t remember what is means though, but looking it up again, “namely” and “that is to say” don’t sound to far off. It sounds similar to i.e. and the distinction between the two is fuzzy for me. The “completeness” of viz is appealing. If only anyone knew what that abbreviation meant.

I’ll got for another v-word and throw the adjective void into the midst. I have looked up this word many times in the dictionary and the definition never really stuck until I looked it up one last time some years after I first read the word. I had always associated the word with the noun, the spatial nothingness and it always confused me when the phrase showed up in the adjectival context. It never occurred to me that there were other forms of nothingness, such as a functional nothingness. I eventually did realize it usually preceded some sort of condition in the adjectival form. It was usually “Void if…” or “Void where prohibited.” With that, I leave a void until my next post.

This blog is void where prohibited, viz. {a complete list of places where it is prohibited, including your grandmother}.

Candlescript

Typography was always one of those things I found to be very bottle-and-cork. When I read a book, I not only note the words used, but I also scrutinize the way the letters are formed and arranged. Perhaps it appeals to my sense of order and how some things have to be a certain way. I do enjoy visual balance. I’ve tried my hand at creating crude typefaces and glyphs but promptly forget about them.

I’m trying my hand once more at creating a typeface but a tad more refined this time. It doesn’t have a name yet, but I am tentatively calling it Candlescript (and perhaps call another version of the same typeface Candlescript Light) for reasons that will be obvious in the future. Here are the ‘A’ and ‘B’ I’ve created so far (click for full size):

Since I know next to nothing about drafting, these weren’t that hard to make (and are therefore less elegant) but I do have the proportions down. There are a few jarring mistakes in the full-size images, but they aren’t the final product. They are just the models I will refine into what I envision Candlescript to be. I haven’t figured out the rest of the alphabet yet, but it should be too hard once I wrap my head around the curves.

Zen and Writing

It is difficult to write without “finding my zen”. I could write without it, but I am never satisfied with the results. In finding my zen, my perspective changes and allows for a greater view of everything. It is a detachment that brings about a calm, but zen and calm are not the same things. I am calm most of the time. Such calm is more often than not a disconnect from everything. I am ten feet underground in my own personal bunker. From there I can see nothing, but I am also detached. Zen is a calm from a connection to things. Everything, the fiddly, fretful, infuriating, and frenetic, is there but it doesn’t get to me. Things are simply simpler that way.

When I write, I write. It is easy to perpetuate this state of mind when writing. The words feel and sound right, even months and years later after having forgotten what I’ve written or what I’ve written word for word. It may not be perfect but it’s pretty dang good to me. It flows well and that is one of the things I hold to in writing. I don’t care to be moralistic or insightful. Sometimes I don’t have a point. Sometimes I just like the sound of my own words. I’m not entirely narcissistic, but I am a compulsive reader with an undeniable finickiness about me (that is not limited to words alone). Anal retentive wouldn’t be an incorrect description. What does that have to do with anything? I don’t know.

How do I find my zen? By seeking wisdom and not the pseudo self-involved sort that grabs you by the collar and wildly asks, “Can’t you see? Can’t you see?!” I seek the kind of wisdom that takes a bit of insight to discover, but it is easy to lose sight of any or all of it. That is what makes it so difficult to write consistently. This post itself has taken perhaps more than two weeks to write to this point. It is impossible not to be distracted, because we have more responsibilities and obligations outside of ourselves. I am neither the man who climbs the wall to paradise, nor the one who returns to the desert to help those who seek it. I simply wander. Not all those who wander are lost, but then again, sometimes we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, if anything at all, only that we’re looking for something. And no one is ever completely alone.

When I write, I write alone. It is quiet enough to hear my thoughts, but never silent. Silence is a dread. There is a life in sound and to disconnect from it is not to find zen or peace but loneliness. When I write, I write from thought. There is little to be found in writing more than myself. There is no more zen there than there was before I started. When I write, I write in bursts. It is often hard to get started, but it is often harder to continue, and even harder to stop. I am often always contemplating something, and often contemplating what I have written and what I will write and it takes these pauses to make things sound right. But it always sound naturals when I am not playing with my words. When I write, it must come to a natural end.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo starts in two days and I’ve already forgotten what I was going to write about. Oh well. Guess I’ll have to wing it this year.