I'd love the idea, myself, if the photos speak to people.

That does sound like fun, Deena. Having a picture to start from often offers more than a single prompt for me.

NaNoWriMo Wank: [link]

I think this guy had to stay up late nights to think of reasons to be pissed. I would also like to assemble a gang of what he calls "real" writers to go shoot him in the face.

(loads nail gun) You can fuck somebody up with that, and there's no recoil. A Real Writer taught me that. Honestly, I think NaNoWrimo is kind of silly(although if there was as much groping and hand-jobs as he suggests, I might have stuck with it!) But so...it's silly. Who am I? The Silly Patrol? It doesn't hurt anyone, and might help somebody come up with a good idea. I only wish I had room to let that piss me off.

I only wish I had room to let that piss me off.

::makes out with erika::

Just because I'd have no problems. Not that he isn't a special kind of asshole. I'm honored "The House Next Door" blog made me a Link of The Day. And I woke up today thinking "You loser. What are you *doing* with your stupid life." Validation is important on a day like that.

All that said, I'm finding it hard not to engage with Nano Jackhole. He's pissing me off. And I don't like the whole "Group Hug!" feeling of NaNo. But it's not building *bombs* fucknuts.

Um, so how long is a novel? I don't mean a big, overblown contemporary novel of the "the old dog looked at the horse and the horse looked at the old dog and they knew that the night was cold and sharp and the trees knew it too but they did not look because they did not have eyes to look" variety, but, say, The Great Gatsby or a carefully crafted Raymond Chandler novel. Are they much larger than 50,000 words?

A novel is generally at least 70,000 words. Most novels are closer to 100,000 words. A mass market paperback of about 350 pages or so is probably a 90,000-100,000 word book.

He's right in that 50,000 words, while actually much longer than a novella (which is more like 30,000) isn't quite a novel. (Unless you write really short romances for Harlequin, which are about 55,000.)

He's wrong in that 50,000 is a great first draft. It's something to build on. And it's an accomplishment.

I don't get why he cares. Most of the people who write in their spare time, NaNo participants or not, won't get published. What does it matter if a whole bunch of people want the support and the encouragement Nano provides to get them started on something they may really enjoy, but which might be a little scary to attempt alone? Writing doesn't have to mean publishing. It doesn't even have to mean posting fic.

Writing is just writing, and it can be as enjoyable and valuable as any other hobby. And I'm willing to bet at least one or two NaNo people *every year* end up with at least the bones of what will be very good novels.

The Great Gatsby

48,852, according to the Cambridge Critical Edition, which oughta know.

(Also, because this amuses me: if you google "Great Gatsby" and "word count", and then exclude "-essay" because you forgot to get rid of all the buy-a-term-paper-online sites at the first pass, the number you get is 50051, which seems remarkably close... even though it originates in a much-plagiarized Cracked Magazine rant about over-long Wikipedia entries. If you google "Great Gatsby" and 50051 to confirm the number, you'll find that it's the middle piece of the ISBN number of the only paperback edition that was available for many years.)