NaNo Eve

Hello friends,


It is an exciting night--yes, it's Halloween, but it's also the night before the National Novel Writing Month contest begins.


Starting tomorrow, I will attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. As mentioned before this will not be my first attempt (we "lost" the first one), but it will be my first NaNo.


I feel good, and ready to get started. Over the last month, I've thought about the story I want to tell, given names to characters, and wondered about their personalities and problems. I have a beginning, middle, and end in mind, but am not certain of how they will fit together. In this respect, one might say I am following a hybrid approach between the "pantsters" (write by the seat of their pants) and the "planners" (write to a strictly formulated outline).


Throughout the month I will do my best to update the blog on the story's progress, and I hope you will follow along and offer such encouragement as you can. Despite my excitement and feeling of confidence, I expect I will need all the encouragement I can get.


Well, here goes!

Interesting link

This was interesting: Putting Time in Perspective.


Thanks to whomever posted this on Bogleheads.

"Fixing the education system is the civil rights challenge of our era."

From Nicholas Kristof's, "The American Dream is Leaving America":

"Until the 1970s, we were pre-eminent in mass education, and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz of Harvard University argue powerfully that this was the secret to America’s economic rise. Then we blew it, and the latest O.E.C.D. report underscores how the rest of the world is eclipsing us.

In effect, the United States has become 19th-century Britain: We provide superb education for elites, but we falter at mass education."

The entire piece can be read here.

NaNoWriMo 2014

Well friends, it's official: I've signed up this year to do my first NaNoWriMo. If you're unfamiliar with NaNo, it's the National Novel Writing Month contest.


The basic idea is that you and hundreds of thousands of others spend the month of November writing a 50,000-word draft of a novel. That's about 1,667 words per day. If the challenge sounds familiar, it's because I made a go at it earlier this year, and, well, fell short. It was humbling, and a useful learning experience--failure often is. We make an attempt, consider how it went, and go at it again once we've recovered.


With less than ten days to go before the contest begins, I'm feeling excited and eager to start. At present, the title of the story I'm hoping to tell is, "Waves from Rizen," and the basic plot involves the formation and resolution of a love-triangle between a girl, Sara Noble, and two boys; Ren Kimora, and Aidan Cain. They're all high-school aged, and the story (as presently imagined) takes place almost exclusively on a fictional archipelago called Soest.


The challenge begins 1 November and ends 30 November, and I hope you will follow along with its progress. I can't promise I'll be able to write much during that stretch, but I will do what I can to keep you updated.


Many thanks, and happy Wednesday :)

Energy self-sufficiency in the military

From the WSJ:

"Increasingly, the Pentagon wants power from its own sources. Solar panels, for example, have become almost as common on bases as flagpoles. Photovoltaic panels provide nearly a quarter of the electricity at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. The panels already save the base about $1 million a year, said Jeffrey Blazi, base energy manager, and a proposed expansion would double the output.

"'Mission readiness is tied to energy security.'"

The full piece can be read here.

When feeling down...

Focus on the field, not the scoreboard.


Write the book; forget about publishing.


Learn the language; forget its utility.


Alter the routine; eschew convenience.


Put money in the market, then ignore it the next five years.


Do your job, even when it sucks.


Go live.


Cook, run, teach, read, make music, and treat others well.


Travel a bit, if that's your thing.


Forgive the follies of your past selves.


Plant seeds so your future selves will prosper.


Forgive those who've hurt you.


Push yourself in little ways.


Laugh at your own expense.


Ignore the news; ignore the noise.


Know yourself.


Be yourself.


And let no man or woman shame you for it.

A word from Asimov on creativity

This was interesting: Isaac Asimov's Essay, "On Creativity" (1959).


Excerpt:

The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table. Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a “new idea,” but as a mere “corollary of an old idea.”

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable. It seems the height of unreason to suppose the earth was round instead of flat, or that it moved instead of the sun, or that objects required a force to stop them when in motion, instead of a force to keep them moving, and so on.

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.

Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)

The full essay can be read here. Thanks for the link, Tyler Cowen.