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.
Bruce Willis is not a great actor. Unlike, say, Johnny Depp, you have a pretty good idea what Willis will be doing in any given movie. He’ll probably beat someone up. He’ll probably get beat up. He’ll probably have a girlfriend who is much younger than he is. He’ll prevail at the end of the film. If you like Willis’ basic character (and I have since Moonlighting), you’ll have a good time watching Red.
Willis is Frank Moses, retired CIA black-ops agent, whose life is reduced to tearing up his pension checks so he can call pension benefits clerk Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker) to flirt. His quiet, humdrum life is jolted back into action with the arrival of a half-dozen commandos sent to assassinate him. Of course, he dispatches these with ease, and then begins a road trip to find out who and why. The first stop is to Kansas City, to rescue Sarah — they may be after anyone he interacts with — and then to New Orleans to meet with Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), an old colleague living in a retirement home. Matheson points them to a reporter recently killed in New York. More chasing around the country side adds paranoid intelligence operative Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), former MI-6 assassin Victoria (Helen Mirren), and retired KGB spy Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox) on board, all while being chased by the CIA’s current version of Frank, William Cooper (Karl Urban, most recently seen as Dr. McCoy in the Star Trek reboot). The clues lead them to defense contractor Alexander Dunning (Richard Dreyfuss) and Vice President Robert Stanton (Julian McMahon).
Along the way, there are equal parts action and comedy. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before — an action bit that could have come from The Matrix, old guy jokes that could have been in Space Cowboys — but it’s all wrapped up in an entertaining package that makes this worth at least the matinée or economy night price of movie tickets.
It’s that time of year again: National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I participated in 2008, but skipped last year. (Darned if I can remember why.) Follow along as I try to post at least once per day through the end of the month.
NaBloPoMo is an easier version of NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. I’m still a little gun shy on the idea of committing to writing an entire novel in a month, but a blog post a day seems achievable.
Lots to talk about this month, what with the mid-term elections, Tea Parties, etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a topic every day. One tool I’ll be using this time that I didn’t have two years ago is my Android-based smart phone, and its Habit Droid app. Habit Droid lets you enter habits you want to develop, and then sends you reminders on the schedule you set.
Visit NaBloPoMo’s web site for more information.
