Maru's Mun Journal

There is a rather new American custom, called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo; it has existed for ten years or so, and the goal is to just sit down and write a novel of 50.000 words in the month of November to prove to oneself that one can.-

floppy_hat is doing this year, for example. Very admirable and challenging project.

Only, if it means to celebrate the success of one who did just that, it's one month late, I learned today.

I was at a lecture about literary St. Petersburg, hoping to learn one or two useful factoids (I did), and there I heard the following astonishing story:

In the autumn of 1866, the famous writer Fyodor Dostoievsky, who was always in debt because he was addicted to gambling, fell prey to a truly evil publisher who paid the writer's debt, provided that Dostoievsky gave him a new novel to publish on November 1st of the same year; otherwise, all past and future writings of Dostoievsky should be forfeit to that totally ruthless and cruel publisher. Dostoievsky signed that, and despaired. He *did* have a novel ready in his mind, but how should he get that down on paper inside just one month? This was 1866; no recording devices were yet around, and even typewriters had not yet gone mainstream. His friends advised him to hire a stenographer and dictate all that text; so he placed an ad in the classifieds, and a rather genteel and very young lady showed up at his door the next day. So, all through October 1866, he dictated his novel "The Gambler" (how apt!!) to her during the day; at night, she took her shorthand notes away and had them written in longhand, and he did his other work (he had yet another novel in the works which was going to be "Crime and Punishment", but that was far too long to attempt doing in a month). In the morning, they corrected the last day's work and then went on with the dictation. And they did it - without a break, within 26 days!! On December 1st that year the novel was published, and the satanic publisher's hold on Dostoievsky was broken.-

Three months later, he married the young lady, and his life decidedly took a turn for the better from then on.

May that be an inspiration you, Lazuli (a.k.a. floppy_hat ), and all the others attempting just that without evil publishers breathing down their necks, or any charming collaborators keeping them on track...

tekalynn wrote a Maglor fic for me! I just saw it when I checked the comments to my dreadfully long general fanfic post from Sunday. Woo-hoo!!

And following up from that, I found that the whole Silmfics community has changed over to here as well. Small wonder the Yahoo groups are all so dead; everybody is here now. I'll have to get Maria from the Wraeththuites to come, though, and the Nazgul as well; then the fun can continue on a totally different level...

Livejournal really isn't about deep and meaningful self documentation, as I always thought, nor about obsessively blathering about every single aspect of one's life, but it's a new way of talking to friends and interacting with all your communities at once. Good Thing, this. The Nazgul is still put off by the idea of blogging, but I hope I'll bring her around - I'll only need some invite codes for her, then.

Now my pumpkin soup is ready, but the Nazgul is still a bit later than me - I get to post another entry before she comes, it seems. I hope she doesn't too long, as I am getting hungry what with all those delicious pumpkin smells.

I wonder whether it would be a good idea to put all my ancient fanfics from way back onto ff.net and link them here for all to peruse. But if I start doing that now, the Nazgul will arrive immediately, according to Murphy. So I might do that tomorrow if I'm not too hung over from our Halloween double feature with Madeira...