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Before I get started this month, let me take a moment and make my annual plug for NaNoWriMo, coming up in November. For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The point of this annual event is to begin and finish a novel within the month of November. Participants begin writing their novel after 12:00:01 a.m. on November 1st, and to win, must complete a minimum of 50,000 words before 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30th.
That's an average of 1667 words per day for the entire month, which the math whizzes out there would already have figured out. While this might sound a bit daunting, it is a very reasonable goal. Some NaNoWriMo participants actually go far beyond the 50K goal. Additionally, you have thousands of other writers the world over also participating, and cheering you on as you type away furiously towards the goal. You see, the beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you don't win by "beating" everyone else. You win by beating your own internal editor, your doubts, and your excuses. In fact, the more people who win, the cooler NaNoWriMo is.
If you've ever had the urge to write a novel, and just need that extra push to get going on it, then I encourage you to sign up for NaNoWriMo. It costs nothing to sign up, and every word you write puts you that much closer to that completed story, even if you don't finish it in November.
October 2008, in the meantime, gives us wondrous things to look forward to as the campaign for President of the United States shifts into the furious pace we all know and hate. During this next month, we will be bombarded with speeches and advertisements trying to convince us of why we should each vote for this candidate, and not vote for that candidate.
I don't know about you, but that seems to me a real good reason to find other things to do in the month of October. Sure, it's a very good idea to examine the candidates and their positions, so we vote for the person we feel best represents what we believe is important for the next four years, but in my experience, speeches and ads are about as effective for giving us that information as the 1954 Encyclopedia Brittanica is at giving us the rules for the latest revision of Dungeons and Dragons.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but when you think of what some people will do to wrangle a favorable result in a weekly session of their game, just imagine what some people will do to wrangle the office of the Presidency.
Here, then, are some ideas for what to do when your blood pressure is rising because of the overload of political posturing in the media.
Get together with some friends for a night of "Apples to Apples" or "Munchkin," with the express rule that anyone who mentions either candidate or party must contribute a set amount of money to a politically neutral charity.
Lock yourself in a room with Diet Pepsi . . . and Snickers . . . bars, and start plotting, researching, and outlining that novel for NaNoWriMo. Hey, you can't start writing the story until November 1st, but that doesn't mean you have to go into it completely cold.
Take scuba diving lessons, and go diving in Mexico in a bay that's some fifteen miles from the nearest paved road. If you're lucky, you'll see a whale shark, or dolphins, or a shy hammerhead shark, or some playful seals. If you're unlucky, someone will take along a battery-operated satellite television system, and will want to subject everyone else to the political ads you're trying to get away from. Trade secret: electronic devices and saltwater do not get along well, and that bay you're diving in is just chock full of salt water that could mysteriously find its way into the satellite receiver.
Join a monastery and undergo an initiation period of solitude and prayer, completely isolated from the outside world. While this might seem rather extreme, when you think of a month's worth of wrangling between political parties, you might just decide to extend it far beyond October, so you don't have to put up with the requisite complaints from people whose candidate didn't win.
Buy several DVD sets of television series you missed seeing the first time they were broadcast, and spend October catching up on every episode. This is almost like watching regular television, only without the commercials (and especially, without political commercials).
Install World of Warcraft . . . on your computer and start playing. I have it on good authority that this is almost as good at making a person disappear from the real world as being abducted by aliens. By the time you've leveled your character up enough to be happy with it, and played through all the expansions, we'll probably be discussing what to do to avoid the ads for the 2012 election.
Go and help out in one of the areas that were hit hard by Hurricane Ike. Some still don't have power, so not only will you being doing much needed and appreciated work, you'll have a very good excuse for why you didn't see that latest ad from whichever candidate the person complaining about it dislikes. If you happen to also be a professional roofer, I happen to know someone who could really use your help.
For the final idea of what to do in October instead of subjecting yourself to the mental anguish of political pandering, go through and read every back issue of Collector Times. Hey, we have archives, too, and they're feeling mighty lonely.
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