Odds and Ends

My brilliant plan is to add another 25,000 words to the collection of essays I wrote last year, bumping the word count to somewhere around 75,000. Intermittently I can edit what I wrote last year and possibly try to fix what I wrote yesterday, for good measure. All of this will happen in November, which is the best month to write, since I can feel the pulse of thousands of NaNoWriMo novelists as they type furiously through the nights.
No, adding to an existing—ahem—nonfiction manuscript, never mind writing less than the required 50,000 words—doesn’t count towards NaNoWriMo. However, writing is writing, and I do well with deadlines. (My favorite quote about deadlines is from Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”)
Last October I produced a two-page list of 47 writing topics I might write about when I wrote Hedera. I had Meg look at them, to see if any sparked her interest. I don’t write solely for Meg’s entertainment, of course, but I value her opinion. She said she would enjoy reading about 14 out of the 47 in particular. I ended up writing about five or six of them possibly, and wrote entirely off-topic for a good portion of the book.
With the writing ideas starting to percolate like my favorite hot drink, I thought I’d list some tonight, including all the ones from last year I didn’t use. Maybe I’ll revisit some of those.
1.       Since I plan to write in November, and this coming November just happens to be a presidential election year, let’s talk politics. Why am I voting for Obama, and what do I like and dislike about his track record these past four years? I can even dig up my blog post about why I voted for Obama in 2008, which I probably still have somewhere.
2.       Why my house is infected with fruit flies, and why it could be considered evidence for spontaneous generation. Suck it, Louis Pasteur. Also, quit flying in front of my monitor while I’m trying to type this list, damn it!
3.       Why do Home Depot commercials annoy me so much, with all the collective pronouns?
 
What do you say we dip into our wallets less and grab ahold of the latest tools out there so we can quit all that messin’ around with extra steps and get busy turning our doing-dials up a notch. More Saving. More Doing. That’s the power of the Home Depot.
Who talks like that? Dick neighbors, that’s who. Go to hell, Ed Harris.
Also, isn’t it rather obvious that Ancestry.com is run by Mormons wanting your personal genealogical data so they can posthumously baptize your grandparents? Does anyone else find that a little weird?
4.       My list of favorite words, 2012 edition. (Boobscruples will definitely make the list.)
5.       When was the first time I fell in love? (Angeliana at age four, naturally. Really fell in love? That’s a tougher question.)
6.       How many times have I fallen in love? (Again, depends how I define it.)
7.       How many people did I date before Meg? (Not sure it matters as much as it did before, but it used to.)
8.       Gays and gay marriage? (I already wrote about Wade in the context of religion, but not in the topic of sexual exploration. I also might write about my interactions with Marc.)
9.       Since I’m an atheist, where do I get my morals? (Well, from the same place as anyone else. Cultural zeitgeist.)
10.   Whom do I admire? Who are my heroes?
11.   What are my plans for raising my children? (Santa?!)
12.   What do I do in my spare time (and why I hate this question)?
13.   What’s my opinion about homeopathy?
14.   Favorite music? Why?
15.   Movies… what are my favorites? Least favorites? (Could be a boring question—“favorite” questions usually are)
16.   How’d I meet Megan? (Online accidentally!)
17.   What’s important to me? What drives me? (pretty vague. Can give my motto and all that.)
18.   Future goals (also fairly broad. How useful are future goals anyway?)
<div style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in; margin: 0in 0in 0pt0.5in”>19.   What’s my family like? (Hmm)
20.   Why did I write 500 poems? That seems… excessive.
21.   What’s my opinion about books? (Can I include audiobooks? Yes I can. It’s my book.)
22.   What was college like?
23.   How’d I get my name? (I legally changed my first, middle, and last name in 2006.)
24.   What’s my opinion about digital file sharing? (AKA “piracy.” I wrote a chapter about this last year, but I was tired that day and it needs to be completely rewritten. The topic interests me and I’d like to explore it more.)
25.   Why is it important to me to keep a diary? (What’s the difference between a diary and a journal?)
26.   Why did I like Legos so much?
27.   What were some computer games I played and why did I play them?
28.   What do I think about Tucson? (Guided tour of the city—or is it a town? I don’t even know who my local district representative’s name is.)
29.   What do I love that no one else loves? Get defensive. (Example: good grammar. And dammit, it’s not spelled “grammer.”)
30.   Think back: man walks on the moon. 9/11 attacks. Pearl Harbor.
31.   Describe one day, from start to finish, in vivid detail. (Example: my wedding.)
32.   Two lists: everything I know about a subject; everything I want to know about my subject
33.   Why I don’t like Christmas. (I seem to recall ranting about it in my diary last year. This should serve for good stock material.)
34.   What’s so great about sex? (Remember that one diary entry long ago that described this? And all of my “sexual diaries?”) Write a sex scene and make it funny.
35.   Juxaposition – take two of my ideas about wildly different things and combine them into one essay.
36.   They aren’t books, they’re manuscripts. On writing novels. In a month. (DPI vs. NaNoWriMo, and my experiences writing with a deadline.)
37.   Write about the three cats: Mikki (Israel), Mickey (Colo Spgs), Bentley (Tucson). Remember that time when I pulled the roomful of string for Mikki and she played all afternoon with me? Or when she sat on the living room chair and didn’t want to get petted? What makes cats tick, anyway?
38.   I’m at the casino gambling with my wife… and we hit it big. The $11,250 Wizard Jackpot on the Cash Wizard. What would I do with the money?
39.   Both of my parents pass away and I inherit a fourth of their wealth. It’s $120,000. What would I do with the money then—and how would I deal with my grief? How much will I miss them?
40.   Death and the Meaning of Life. [Insert profound thoughts here]
By no means a comprehensive list, it should keep me out of mischief. It occurs to me that I might steal one or two of them for my diary, a preemptive strike if you will. November seems a long way off.