Happy Veteran's Day! No matter how you feel about the current war, please do thank them. They've served our nation with their lives so we can enjoy our freedom.

On the writing front — I've given up on NaNo. It's not that I hate it or anything…well…maybe. But ultimately it just wasn't working for me. The current project requires a bit more thought from me, esp. because I'm dealing with a brand new world and characters. Besides, I can't write the middle section unless I'm fairly satisfied that the opening's more or less on the right track. Why? Because I don't want to throw away the entire manuscript and start over. So currently I'm trying to get down about 1,000 to 1,500 words a day, five days a week. I'm not aiming for a super clean first draft, but I want to be able to keep a big chunk of the storyline and so on. Already I cut about 1k from the opening I wrote during my NaNo attempt because it was just…bad. So I've started a new progress table (see below):

Moving on to general life matters — DD asked me about my dwarf hamsters. Shiro and Kuro are doing great. Hero Material and I spent over $100 on new cage expansions and toys for them on Sunday. They have tubes to nowhere, two wheels, a heated nest, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, a sand bath, a litter box, hanging wood blocks they can chew on, etc. They're so happy in their little heated nest unit because it keeps them very warm, esp. in winter. Japanese apartments don't have central heating, so it can be fairly cold at night. (May is convinced I'm going to be one of those hovering mothers who's going to spoil my children rotten.)

Some pictures —

Hamster ball:

A brand new water dispenser:

A newly decorated old cage (contains: a heated nest, a water dispenser, a toilet paper core, a sand bath, a litter box):

An expansion cage / secondary unit (contains: two wheels, a water dispenser, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, hanging wood blocks, an L-tube):

Two wheels (one new, one old):

Tubes to nowhere (they connect the cages actually):

A bonus pic — Kuro in her brand new litter box!

Speaking of Kuro — as much as I find Shiro and Kuro adorable, I have a small…err…issue. The problem is that I cook, and sometimes even after a vigorous washing with soap, my hands smell a lil like food, so Kuro — she's the glutton of the two — nips or just outright bites my fingers. But she climbed onto my hands last night and sat there for a bit. So for that, I'll forgive her for trying to eat me. I even wrote a haiku dedicated to my hamsters' uber-cuteness:

The haiku critiquer told me that maybe I should expand my imagination since mine only described something as it was. Maybe next time I'll write about the man-eating Kuro.

BTW — The Big Three begging for $50 billion from the U.S. government made the headlines in Japan. Japanese people are astounded that the Big Three want to use $25 billion out of the amount requested on health care.

I'm usually against bailouts in general, and I'm not sure if throwing money at them is going to solve the real reason why they're so cash-strapped: they are losing market share, and their operation is extremely inefficient.

The Big Three seem to believe it's fashionable to blame the subprime crisis / credit crunch for their cash problems, but even when the economy was doing great, the Big Three weren't raking in dough the way Toyota, Honda and Nissan did. Since Ford has just decided to ramp up its gas-guzzling F-series truck production (hey, the gas price fell!), I'm not convinced that the Big Three will use any of the money to build more fuel-efficient environment-friendly cars. Also I don't think the Big Three will be able to survive even after the $50 billion bailout. Why? Because they can't force people to abandon their Japanese and German cars and buy the Big Three cars. Legislating people to buy American cars would be the least American thing to do, and unless the Big Three can make stylish, fuel-efficient and reliable cars that American public wants to buy, they will continue to burn cash at an exponential rate and ultimately fail. There's a reason why Deutsche Bank downgraded GM target price to $0.00 / share yesterday.

Finally, I'll leave you with a haiku I wrote a couple of weeks ago in my Japanese class. The topic was seasonal joys.

How's everyone doing?

BTW — My site host is having a lot of problems with its email server. If you sent me an email requiring my response but haven't heard back, please resend later or leave me a comment with your contact information, and I'll be happy to send you a note from my gmail account.

Thanks!

It took forever to get those pages down. I think I did my opening wrong.

How's everyone else doing?

Not too shabby. I only wrote five pages, specifically because that's all I've been planning to do anyway.

How about you?

Not too shabby, but I could've done better…

How's everyone doing? BTW — Is it me or is the official NaNo site just s-l-o-w?

As you know, Devil Falls is out. (Everyone, go buy a copy! ;) ) Samhain doesn't register copyright for the works it publishes, and so it was up to me to do it. And I did just now. It's very easy to do by going to copyright.gov and it only cost $35. (BTW — there's nothing fishy about Samhain not registering copyright for its authors. Samhain is a small press, and it doesn't have the kind of resources to do it for all the titles it publishes.)

Some may ask why I bothered. Or why I hadn't waited to see if it was worth it based on the sales data before I registered.

I did it for the same reason I got my Samhain contract reviewed by a literary attorney. This is business, and I wanted to do it right. There's a big difference between the kind of protection you can get by registering within three months of publication v. later (or not at all):

Registration within three months allows you to become eligible to receive statutory damages and legal costs and attorneys' fees from a copyright infringer.

…lots of other benefits that come with registration, like providing a public record of your copyright claim or that copyright registration is a prerequisite to bringing a copyright infringement suit. Sure, you can register your copyright later and then sue, but you'll end up paying a lot more to expedite the process since you'll want to immediately obtain an injunction against whoever is infringing your copyright.

Will I ever need the protection? I hope not, but you never know, and I prefer to have all my bases covered.

Now for more fun stuff….NANOWRIMO!!!!!

I'm planning to write 15 ms-formatted pages a day, five days out of a week, and write about 5 to 9 pages on the other two days. I think that's very reasonable.

So NaNo, here I come!