National Novel Writing Month 2018: The theoretical plan for success

I am not ready to commit to NaNoWriMo 2018 just yet, but I do have a plan to follow, should I decide to do so. Here it is:

  • Have a plan
  • This is to say, not only have an idea, but have a story ready and planned out in advance
  • Planning means outlining. Outlining the whole thing. Even the ending.
  • Choose the writing program to be used
    • Current candidates: WriteMonkey, Scrivener, Atomic Scribbler, iA Writer
  • Develop a proper save/backup scheme that won’t result in corrupted files and a sad author
  • Do more testing of dictation to help speed up the first draft process
  • Write 50,000 words in 30 days between November 1-30, 2018

This concludes my plan.

I’ve highlighted the most important part in bold.

Winging in–called pantsing by NaNoWriMo folks–has not just failed for me in past attempts, it’s failed spectacularly. See my 2017 summary for an example. This year I am going to outline my story in advance. If I don’t have this done by November 1, I will not take part. Instead I will post an amusing cat picture on this blog that is somehow writing-related. Maybe I’ll do that, anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll post some of the story ideas I’m mulling.

Run 596: Fire danger low, slug danger high

Run 596
Average pace: 5:36/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 3:45 pm
Distance: 5:02 km
Time: 28:11
Weather: Overcast, some sun
Temp: 15ºC
Humidity: 80%
Wind: nil to light
BPM: 168
Weight: 163.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 4560 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8

Last night we had a rare thunderstorm advisory for Metro Vancouver warning people to stay indoors due to the possibility of flash floods. It rained copiously.

It was still raining this morning and I planned on running in the rain for the first time in quite awhile. But I waited to see if the rain would ease up.

I waited and waited.

Close to 3 p.m. the sky had brightened and I figured that was as good as it was going to get, so I put on my long-sleeved shirt, donned my wired Ear Pods (not wanting to risk the non-water resistant Air Pods that cost about seven times as much) and headed out into a light sprinkle.

Weirdly, by the time I got to the river, it stopped raining and it stayed stopped for both the run and the walk back. At times the sun even came out.

Considering I nearly skipped running altogether, it actually went very well. It was about 15ºC, which is, as far as I’m concerned, the Goldilocks temperature for running. I did sweat a little, but only because it was quite humid after the rain. I went clockwise around the lake, thinking the trails on the south side would be in better shape after the rain, but there were only a few puddles in total that I had to deke around. The trail was generally in quite good shape and sparsely populated, though more were coming out after I was winding down from the run.

Speaking of coming out, the slugs were everywhere. For every puddle I dodged I probably dodged ten slugs. It’s to the point where if it rains, I expect to see slugs everywhere I go now.

The run went surprisingly well. I felt good, had no issues, and trucked along, snipping five seconds off the last run and coming in at 5:36/km. My BPM was up a fair bit, to 168, but still (just) below the max I’m comfortable with. I jogged the majority of the walk out of the lake, with one km even coming in comfortably under the 6:00/km mark. I’m probably ready to run farther now, maybe even back to doing a full 10K, but my knees scare me. Stupid knees. Still, they held up well today. Maybe they like the damp.

Here’s where I once again vow to run during the week, but it’s strangely hard to motivate myself. Maybe now that I’ve done a “rain” run it will be easier.

Book review: Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World

Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the WorldPost-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World by James Ball
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The biggest issue with Post-Truth is that the people who could most benefit from it will never read it. In fact, they’d likely just disregard it as more “fake news.” For someone like myself, there is little in here that is revelatory. I am only too aware of the rise of not just fake news (both real and imagined) but also what author James Ball calls “bad news,” which is not to say someone is calling to tell you your pet hamster Binky just had a very unfortunate accident, but is rather a description of news that is poorly researched and presented, or otherwise fails to meet the standards one would expect from a reputable news source.

Ball does devote a chapter at the end on ways to combat the rise of BS, but it is, perhaps by design, a combination of the obvious (“if you want to be trusted, be trustworthy,” “try not to succumb to conspiratorial thinking”), the somewhat depressing (entreaties to essentially dumb things down, wear your biases openly, and try to look anti-establishment even if you aren’t, because the tide has turned against the establishment) to the exceedingly unlikely (like asking people to go outside their bubbles. While on the surface it makes sense to step beyond your proverbial echo chamber–Ball advises following “thoughtful people” on the other side–it entirely skips over how one addresses or interacts with the more problematic people at the fringes that are driving so much of the BS into the mainstream. How does one even find a “thoughtful” racist, much less engage them meaningfully?).

Some of the suggestions are appealing, though. I particularly like the concept of the tech giants funding an independent news organization as a way to combat the death of newspapers and other news media. But even if such an organization existed, you would still have plenty of news media that are more interested in pushing an extremist agenda propped up by lies and distortion.

In the end this is a bleak book because, though Ball never explicitly says so, you are left with the impression that most people are easily-snookered idiots, and that perhaps we have only made it so far as a civilization because a strong minority has pushed against the ignorant masses. But for now the ignorant masses seem to be winning–or rather, allowing the autocrats they adore to win.

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Photo of the Day, September 11, 2018

The sunflower looms.

I went back and forth on whether to crop this photo or how to crop it. I ended up with a compromise where you can see the entire head, but with a lot of the extraneous background snipped away. I may post the mega-close version later.

Weird rain

Weird in that today is the first time in a long while that we have had fairly steady rain during the day.

School kids were probably fuming. This is the first weekend since classes started.

Other signs of impending fall:

  • The swimming pool at Hume Park is closed for the season, and has been drained. The slide is still in place, so if someone really wanted to, they could climb up it and slide down into a nearly four foot deep concrete hole. Probably not recommended.
  • Likewise, the bubble over the tennis courts at the Burnaby Tennis Club (which I can see on my runs at Burnaby Lake) has been put back in place. It looks like a big oval marshmallow. Mmm. marshmallows. People would have been able to play tennis today because it’s up, so good timing there.
  • The sunset tonight was at 7:37 p.m. The post-dinner walks are going to be spooky pretty soon.
  • It never got past 20ºC today. In fact I don’t think it got past 16. Brr, relatively speaking.

I’m not complaining about the change in weather, mind you, as we need the rain and despite a slow start in July, the summer has been pretty dry overall. Still, I always lament this season’s passing. The world just feels so alive and vibrant in the summer.

I will now count the days until next summer. Actually, thanks to a Google search, I now know it’s 265 days. I’m undecided on whether this precise level of knowledge is a good or bad thing.

Run 595: The mysterious bladder

Run 595
Average pace: 5:41/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:34 pm
Distance: 5:04 km
Time: 28:38
Weather: Cloud, some sun
Temp: 17-19ºC
Humidity: 71%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 160
Weight: 161.4 pounds
Total distance to date: 4555 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8

I missed Thursday’s planned run due to a mysterious soreness in my abdomen that became more noticeable when walking or especially when walking quickly. I figured it would make for an unpleasant run. It diminished yesterday and today I felt it was worth risking.

My best guess (I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV) is it’s my bladder acting up, possibly a minor infection caused by being a man of my age. My plan was to let it go a few days and see if it got worse, then make a trip to the clinic if it did. Since it didn’t get worse I went for a run instead.

And while I felt it in a distant sort of way it only happened briefly and ended up not being a factor at all.

The knees, though, were a bit creaky, possibly from the four days off, though they also didn’t seem to slow me down.

The forecast warned of possible thunderstorms and while it showered in the morning, the afternoon consisted on non-threatening cloud and occasional sun. The breeze was up, but the conditions were overall quite pleasant for running.

Despite being only a degree or two cooler than Monday, there were no topless runners today. The threat of rain did mean the balance between runners and walkers was much closer, though.

I got off to a zipper-than-expected start, my first km coming in at 5:28. As expected, this emptied most of the tank for the next few km, though I picked up to 5:38/km by the last km and finished overall at 5:41/km, two seconds better than Monday’s pace and the third consecutive run where my pace has improved. BPM was back down to 160 and other than the aforementioned knees, no real issues, though I felt I worked a bit harder at points today.

If I stay on schedule the next run will be on Tuesday, when the sun sets at 7:33 p.m. That’s still well after I would be done, but it’s getting close to where the gap is only about 30 minutes. Once again summer has gone by way too fast.