It’s time to say “Fare Thee Well” to another NaBloPoMo, and this time I made it. Woo-hoo!
Looking back at a month’s worth of entries, I think a lot of them are, well… just not very good. Pretty much every night I ran up against the deadline, and often I published a preliminary version of the piece only to finish after midnight. Even with this time extension most nights, the writing just isn’t very good. They seem rushed, as indeed they were.
Having a deadline does force more production, and real writers will often tell you that it’s important just to write every day — just get some words down on paper. I can see where there’s value in that, but I think that Brian Dunning at Skeptoid has a more insightful and useful guideline. Dunning has taken Skeptoid from scratch to a popular podcast (roughly 100K downloads a week), lecture series, books, a video podcast, and is working on getting a version of the show on PBS, all in about four years. That’s fantastic, and when he released Skeptoid episode 200 in April 2010, he revealed the secret.
To make all of this happen, my alarm clock goes off at 5:30 in the morning, every weekday, every week, every month, for three and a half years so far. Yes, it’s a big commitment and one that I take very seriously. It’s fun, but it can’t be treated like a hobby. I treat it like a business. I follow a strict schedule, and it’s the first thing I block off on my calendar — before work, before play. A hobby, by definition, is something that you fool around with in your spare time. It’s not managed. My commitment to my listeners is that Skeptoid is not a hobby. That’s why you expect, and receive, a new episode every single week at 7:00 AM Pacific time every Tuesday morning — without fail. And that dependability I think is one reason why people respond the way they do.
Someday, I hope to develop the kind of commitment to this blog, or some other writing venue, that Dunning brings to Skeptoid. That I haven’t done it so far, is the reason why this blog has readers numbering in the low single digits.
Another field trip to dictionary.com:
penultimate
- next to the last: the penultimate scene of the play.
The penultimate signature on the Declaration of Independence is that of Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut. He fought in the Revolution, reaching the rank of Major General, and died in office as the Governor of Connecticut.
25-year-old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price may have been the second-to-last man to die in World War I, at 10:58 AM on November 11, 1918. Private Price was pursuing retreating German soldiers when he received his fatal gunshot.
The Slovak koruna will become the penultimate currency to be merged into the Euro, assuming that Estonia discontinues use of the kroon as scheduled on January 1, 2011. Given how well the Euro is faring these days, you have to wonder how eager the Estonians are to drop the kroon.
Sarah Palin’s Alaska is, of course, the penultimate state… just before Barack Obama’s Hawaii.
Of course, the koruna might lose its penultimate status — the most likely current candidates to drop their currencies to join the Euro are Lithuania (the litas was supposed to have been replaced by the Euro on January 1, 2010, but the change was postponed because of the current crisis), Latvia (the lats is expected to change over in either 2012 or 2013), and Denmark (the Danish krone – unlikely since Danish voters opted out of the Euro in 2000). Similarly, Alaska would cease to be penultimate if, say, Puerto Rico voted for statehood (no such plebescite is currently scheduled).
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I is the penultimate film in the series. It’s the seventh film in the series, which had only seven books. However, Warner Brothers, in their quest to milk as many dollars out of the license as possible, have split the final novel into two films. <sigh>
November 29th is the penultimate day of NaBloPoMo 2010.
I had planned to put a picture here that I’d taken from my hotel room at the Millenium Hilton in Manhattan. It’s a picture of Ground Zero and the sunlight reflecting off skyscrapers around it. It seemed appropriate, because in just a few hours, I’m flying back to New York, and I’ll be staying at the same hotel. Somehow, it’s disappeared from my phone, despite the fact that it’s still my wallpaper on that phone.
So, instead, I present this photo of Tulip, taken last month when I was packing for a trip to Orlando.
Tulip wants to go, too.
