Well, let’s see how this thing drives
Monthly Archives: October 2004
Hunkering Down for NaNoWriMo (migrated)
November is National Novel Writing Month.
Somehow the timing is impeccable. Late fall is when I usually seem to wind up taking stock, gathering in, hunkering down. Introspective time, images of the days of summer, of the past year go gathering up ghostlike and swirl around like the leaves coming down. Some blow away, and some, sodden with the fall drizzle, take on some mass and stay, mashed by boots and tires, layering down to the soil.
I have been reaching out, grasping at some of these ghosts – I do anyways, to see where the year’s been, how it fitted, what kind of layer it added to my life. Now, I hope some of these ghosts will stick around and make themselves at home in this year’s novel.
Reread what I wrote last year – didn’t ‘finish’ – and was delighted at how good it was, having set it aside 30 November last, expecting sheer gibberish when I picked it up last night. While nowhere near anything I’d publish, being a draft that needs heavy edits (as well as completion), I did find a good line or two, and found myself glad to run into the characters again, as friends I’d not seen in a while.
Also, left me wondering how the hell I’m going to pull that off again. I liked those guys, I want to find out more about them. The challenge this year is going to be in finding another crew I want to spend a month with, following them around, pen in hand, curiously watching and writing down what they do.
Greenspan says “Make BioDiesel!”
Ok – so that is my intrepretation. Here is an item from the Sunday New York Times
“Greenspan said Friday that the long term outlook for global oil supplies is reassuring even though anxiety about dwindling reserves has helped push spot prices to nearly $55 a barrel.”
Greenspan is reassured by his faith in markets. And, reading a bit deeper, reassured in a sort of ‘well the earth will fall into the sun in a billion years anyway so what does it matter” kind of way. According to the times, Greenspan said “market forces would lead to both increased oil production, greater energy efficency, and faster development of alternative sources of power.” I would tend to agree, that this has to happen in the long run, but given a presidential administration that is more or less the oil industry, and a consumer body that has been conditioned to only buy one thing, “more”, it seems that “market forces will not be left to operate cleanly or without opposition. These forces of denial will simply increase the pain as they struggle against the natural flow of the market.
More telling is his concern regarding the rise in future contract prices for delivery ten or so years out. These prices, having held steady at around $20 a barrel for the past ten years, have now climbed to around $35 a barrel. This reflects the industry’s belief that oil will continue to be increasingly hard to get. This syncs with the fact that new refineries are not being built – the industry cannot see it’s way clear to paying off that large of an investment. This is not a dire prediction coming from eco-freaks, but the a decision reflecting a lot of information and thought by people with a lot of dollars on the table.