So, this year, I think I’m going to try and knock out a novella in a month as part of National Novel Writing Month. (The standard length really creates a novella, not a novel, but “National Novella Writing Month” wouldn’t put as many butts in the seats.) I don’t have any illusions that this will produce something publishers are going to be eager to snatch up, but I still would like to make this a good practice run for a “serious” novel attempt.
In that spirit, I’m going to do some advance planning for my piece, “The Unicorn Hunter,” periodically throughout the year. While I have the basic concept — the title almost tells it all — I’ll want a good outline ahead of time, an idea of who the characters are and some ideas of the setting.
Wendy Wheeler has a good basic outline on her site. I’ll rough something out over the next week and post it here.
Obviously, 2007 is still just getting started and, more obviously, iTunes doesn’t have every song I’m listening to, but here, for your 30-seconds-at-a-time previewing pleasure, are the top 100 92 of 2007 so far.
This week, lots of media outlets will be talking about the Iraq War, four years later. The Onion, straight from the heart of America’s Dairyland, has published a special issue looking back on their Iraq coverage to date.
I’m apparently one of the last people still enjoying Lost. I view it as a big thick novel, of the stupidly long novel format that’s more and more common nowadays, and enjoy it for what it is.
Anyway, there’s two good new Lost-related interviews out there:
Here’s a book I think every CEO and HR person should likely read: The No Asshole Rule
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It’s just what you think it is: A breakdown of how assholes in the workplace, far from being the big rainmakers or motivators they’re sometimes perceived as being, actually hurt the bottom line.
Author Bob Sutton — a smartypants Harvard Business Review columnist, so maybe his ideas will gain some traction — is an online kind of guy, whose son plays World of Warcraft, so his blog is full of discussions of how online businesses — guilds — exemplify a lot of the stuff he’s talking about.
Everyone who’s played an MMORPG, either in a hardcore raiding guild, or simply knowing people who are in one, knows all about the yelling, demeaning, nasty raid leader. Not surprisingly, most of these outfits fall apart the moment the members feel like there’s another viable alternative out there. But so many members are so indoctrinated that they think that sort of thing is necessary to success in the raiding game that they just find another dysfunctional outfit and repeat the process until they finally quit the game in exhaustion.
(In my EverQuest guild, and to a lesser extent in my WoW guild, I myself was known for barking orders a bit, but I tried to make sure to keep it targeted on issues, not personalities, and to be generous — and specific — with praise when it was appropriate.)
If anyone in the newspaper industry who ever has or feels like they’re likely to hire me at some point would like a free copy of this book, just e-mail me. It’ll be money well spent.
You can listen to the interview or read the full transcript of the Marketplace interview with Bob Sutton here.
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