I win!

Actually, I don't win anything, but that's really the best way to describe how I feel right now.

These times, at least for me, are few and far between, but I like it when they come. Maybe it's different for some people, but for me the times when I'm hit with a sudden, mind-cracking revelation don' t come around that often.

But it just happened. Actually, it's been building for a few days and it just cracked wide open. Break on through to the other side and all that. It really feels like I kicked a hole in something and I just want to run around screaming at the world. But I won't. I'll just sit here with my headphones on and grin like a fucking idiot.

Let me try to explain:

I first tried my hand at Mastering in 1998. That's Mastering as in the oft-misunderstood black art of mastering audio recordings. Ask ten people what audio mastering is and you'll get ten answers. Ask ten people who make a living in audio production what mastering is and you'll get ten even more different answers.

To try to outline it without going off on some crazy quest for the truth, I'll give a quick rundown of the other end of the process.

You start with a recording studio. Or at least a recording device. This recording device is capable of recording multiple tracks so you can stack things up and build a song. 12 tracks of drums (each individual drum on a track), four rhythm guitars, a bass guitar, some lead guitars, some vocals. You can end up with 24 or 48 or more tracks. Just ask Hansi.

Once the song is built these multiple tracks are mixed. Mixing takes 24 or 48 or however many bajillion tracks of Hansi vocals and combinates them together so that you end up with a single "song" which actually consists of two tracks - which most people recognize as LEFT and RIGHT - just like the jacks on your stereo at home are labelled.

So you spent a lot of money at a recording studio and you paid some other guy $10,000 a song to mix your album (if you're Green Day that is, and you can even get one of the Lord Alge bros. fone numbers) and now you have a MIX.

Funny thing is, the mix sounds cool in your car but you have to adjust the EQ in your home stereo or it sounds funny. Then when you take it to your mom's house her cheap boombox sounds OK but the big stereo sounds a little off.

So we have problem in that our MIX doesn't translate across all available systems. Since we didn't get Chris Lord Alge to mix it, it's also not very loud compared to other CD's we like.

So maybe it's easier to tell you that mastering fixes these problems than to try to tell you what mastering actually does.


But that's what it does. Or what one does when mastering. You take a stero mix - or a bunch of them in the case of ten or twelve songs making up an album and you tweak them. You make them have a nice volume with clean transistions between the songs and you make some adjustments with EQ or compression to (hopefully) allow the mix to play back equally well on boomboxes, car stereos and expensive hi-fi shit.

And like I said, I first tried it in 1998.

I didn't know a fucking thing about it. But that doesn't stop me in most things, so I didn't let it stop me here.

I joined a MASTERING FORUM and I got e-mails from people who earn a living mastering professional recordings. I talked at length with the guy who mastered whatever Shania Twain record sold four-hundred-twenty-billion copies. I tried to get a handle on what the deal was, why it cost so much to do it, and how I could A.) do it for myself and B.) charge other people to do it to their songs.

And I mastered an album. It's out there with my name on it. You can get it at Amazon.com or your local record store or download it from iTunes.

I also mastered stuff for other people and they paid me $40 an hour for my efforts. I didn't do a whole lot of these, and looking back that's probably a good thing. Definitely a good thing.

After a while, I learned enough to know that it was very easy to do more harm than good with mastering tools if you didn't know what the fuck you were doing. I certainly didn't know what the fuck I was doing, so I tried to limit any actual mastering. Instead, I admitted defeat and just slapped a Louderizer plug-in on the output of whatever I was mixing so I could get a decent volume without the negative effects of bad EQ and compression.

But earlier this week I stumbled upon a folder with some really old shit on one of my hard drives. It was a project where I took my first band's middle demos (demos 2 & 3 out of four total) and dumped the DAT mixes into the computer and attempted to master them.

I'm guessing this took place in 2001 when I was first starting to fully realize how shitty bad mastering was.

When I played back this discovery, I was appalled. It was loud. It was muddy. It sounded hideous. I quickly negated all the changes and listened to the raw mix. It was pretty much the way I remembered it from 12 years ago when we recorded it - it had some problems and didn't sound hi-fi or professional at all, but my ears also told me there were options here - and for the first time they told me exactly what needed to be done.

So I readjusted the adjustments. I played with EQ and got the guitars to sound super crunchy. I got the drums to bang a little louder. I got the volume up to a disgusting level. And then I burned a CD for the drive to work the next morning.

And that drive to work was the first part of tonight's revelation. Actually, it might have started forming on the way home. On one of those drives I realized that in making the guitars sound crunchy and delicious that I had done ill to the vocals. They sounded thin and quiet -- not natural at all.

And in that moment my brain said to myself, "If you could just EQ the guitars and leave the vocals alone it would fix the whole thing."

And I knew in my heart that this was possible, but I didn't know _exactly_ how to do it.

See, the vocals (and the bass guitar and the meat of the drums) are all in the center of the stereo image. They come out of both speakers at the same volume. On the other hand, the guitars (and the toms and the cymbals and the reverb) are panned around the stereo image - meaning each individual element is louder in one speaker than it is in the other speaker.

So tonight I sat down and tore apart the mix. I made it so the stuff in the center came out one side and the panned stuff came out the other side. It makes no real sense -- especially when you hear it playing back that way, but it works. You just need the right tools.

And then I EQ'd the shit out of the guitars. And I compressed the fuck out of the vocals and drums and bass. With the right tools.

And then I put it all back together so the drums and bass and vocals are in the center and the guitars are on the sides and the GUITARS ARE GIGANTIC and the BASS HAS BIG OL' NUTS and the DRUMS FUCKING CRUSH YOU and the VOCALS ARE MORE CLEAR THAN EVER BEFORE and it stopped being a demo and sounds like an album and I'm now ready to stand up, run out of my house, and punch the first person I see.

Watch out. Don't be in my driveway any time soon.

To maintain whatever is left of anonymity on this site, I won't post any samples because the only place I have to do so is my own personal web server which is named after my own personal self. If I find some other place to put up some before and afters maybe I'll do so.

But did I mention I'm ready to go fucking ballistic here? Fuck.

Political Inbox

--------------- Original Message ------------------
Subject: Fight Back Against The Veto
From: "John Kerry" <info@johnkerry.com>
Date: Wed, May 2, 2007 2:25 pm
To: Harold@76FordPintoRocks.com
---------------------------------------------------
Hi Harold,

When I first introduced legislation with Russ Feingold to set fire to the Republicans putting up a roadblock to our efforts, the dirtbags in Congress, succumbing to White House pressure from the President to back off on this, didn't do anything. And the President vetoed our efforts.

It's time for that to change. It's time to set fire to these Roadblock Republicans:

http://www.setfire.to/page/roadblockrepublicans

The Republicans are already showing signs of fireproofing. Many are running away from this President's disastrous policy because they know they are flammable. But that's not enough; we need to incinerate the GOP on this one. To do that, we need to spray them with gasoline in a voice loud enough that they can't help but hear it, and we need to let it soak into their clothes in the language any politician understands: Zippo Lighters.

So we're launching a molotov cocktail on critical points in the GOP caucus. We are targeting a few key Senators for this blaze: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be immolated. Senators Sununu, Collins, and Coleman will suffer third degree burns. The last three are already top races for 2008, and Senator McConnell is the bulwark of the GOP leadership on this. For that, he will end up looking like the Buddhist guy on the front of that Rage Against the Machine album.

So go here to contribute to a fund run by our friends at SetFire.to that will go to the eventual fires spread in those states and then write an email message to those Senators explaining why you did this. Remember, gasoline prices are skyrocketing, so it's going to take a lot of money to buy enough gasoline to ensure the proper incineration of these Republicans.

This is an extraordinary campaign; to my knowledge, nothing quite like this has ever been done. But these fires can make all the difference in each of these races, and these Senators will know it. Senator McConnell is secure in his belief that no one will be able to combust the air around him. We can show that he's wrong. The other Senators are already top targets in 2008, but they hope the power of asbestos and drinking lots of water can save them. We can show them that the power of Washington won't stand against the power of fire.

We can raise the temperatures for them and make the heat they feel from the fire greater than the pressure they feel from the White House. And when that happens, they just might help tell this President that his policy is a disaster and we must change course -- Or he'll be next to catch fire.

Let's clear the way for a new fire -- let's insist on a fire that lives up to the sacrifice of our incredible matches:

http://www.setfire.to/page/roadblockrepublicans

Sincerely,

John Kerry

------------------------------------
Paid for by John Kerry for Fire
------------------------------------

Fuck the TV

So do you watch that American Idol?

We started watching it last year and were easily hooked -- mostly because of the terrible sucks who have no idea they suck as bad as they suck at the auditions.

But, once it got rolling it was still interesting.

This year, however, I've had trouble getting into it as much. I dunno what it is about it, cuz a lot o of the people are pretty good singers, but there hasn't really been anyone who grabbed me right off the bat. Last year, I instantly liked Taylor Hicks and hoped he would last a while on the show - tho I even stated right about the time they gave him his ticket to Hollywood -- "He's good but he won't ever win this thing."

I was wrong about that one.

So this year is girl-heavy. I'm betting my best pants that the background-singer-lady is the winner, cuz she pretty much blows the rest of them out of the water. Out of the guys left, the beatboxer is the only one I like.

But the people who were still bringing me back to the TV week after week are now gone -- last week saw the end of Gina What's-her-face, who could get some rock going, tho she made some shitty song choices. And this week saw the end of Haley Scarnato.

And the sad part is, that stupid grinning fucker with the never-ending cavalcade of dumb hair is still on there - and not even in the bottom three. I can't stand him, and I hate the fact that the anti-whatever people out there are calling in to skew the results.

So this week saw the end of Haley. As far as singing is concerned, it's really not that much of a loss. She was far from the best, but sometimes you have to just sit back and enjoy the view. I know I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Fuck Easter

What the fuck is with this Easter shit, anyhow?

I mean, really, what do bunnies and chicks and colored eggs have to do with the Jesus?

All of those things (kinda like Christmas trees, too) are remnants of ancient pagan beliefs which have just been absorbed by Christianity. Would the mommies at your local Sunday School be happy to know we eat chocolate bunnies today as a remnant of earlier beliefs that rabbits must be sacrificed in the early spring as an offering to a god or goddess so that the cold death of winter could be washed away and all the living things renewed again? Or how about baby chicks which come from eggs (tho not colored ones)? Here too is something which lay dormant for many long weeks and now steps into the light of day from out of the darkness of its shell.

Isn't it funny how that kind of stuff mirrors a certain "resurrection" story?

What's not funny is driving all the way to Chipotle and finding them closed just because it's fucking Easter. At least the weather was disagreeable (now, where's all that rebirth and rejuvenation shit when you need it?) cuz if it had been nice we would have ridden the 18 miles on our bikes. And then I probably wouldn't be able to put into words just how fucking pissed I would be.

But I got a burrito on Monday, so all is not lost. However, I never did get one of those giant chocolate covered peanut butter eggs. Stupid Easter.

White Trash Confessions

Just in case we might ever find some reason to get snobby or uppity, I'll post here that earlier this week we took the old coin-operated washing machine to the dump.

As I scroll back through the posts, I see one in January where I finally got around to taking pictures of the shitty thing.

So that means it sat in our driveway, right in front of the house for over three months.

It got snowed on, rained on, hit by snowplows and BMW's. But I don't think it was quite good enough to qualify for any special rewards on Blue Collar TV. Maybe if it had had some company, like the busted Dodge Caravan that sat in our driveway (with no engine) for the first six months we lived here, we could get a fancy TV show reward.

All in all, I think we're pretty safe from any sort of snobbery. But, if we start acting like uppity assholes just let me know and I'll go straight downstairs and pee in the sink.

Dzienkuje, Home Depot

Home Depot has instituted this new thing where they ask you what your P.O. number or job name is. I guess this is so you can somehow track your Home Depot spending, and is probably very useful to people who actually make a living out of fixing shit in houses.

When asked by the cashier about my particular project, I've always just told her to leave it blank.

But, last night I took advantage of the stealth-checkout option. (Stealth, because if I were half my current age I might try to take advantage of the lax supervision...)

So there I am, standing at the self-checkout kiosk faced with the daunting task of (oh my god, can I really do this?) SCANNING MY ITEMS! It's so complicated it's almost scary. I mean, you pick up your item and you swipe it over the sensor. And after nine or ten tries the thing beeps and tells you to put it in the bag. Don't you think they could make this easier? I mean... put it in the bag? How do I do that?

OH, WAIT A MINUTE. That's not me. That's what must have been running through the head of the guy in front of me.

Once WonderShopper was checked out and paid up, I swiped my single item across the bar code scanner. Once. It beeped. I put it in the bag. The machine said, "Unexpected item in bagging area," then shut up as it realized I was actually doing it right.

I pressed the FINISH AND PAY button and then, much to my delight, I was presented an on-screen keyboard which displayed the following instruction:

ENTER YOUR P.O.#/JOB DESCRIPTION

So I did.

I guess I'd better get right to work on that project.

Bunny Sadness

The bunny is going to be sad. My wife says so.

See, the bunny is dangerous to the baby. The bunny's nose can come off and kill the baby. This can't be, so we have to send the bunny back. They promise to send us a voucher to use to purchase another toy of our choosing.

But my wife says the bunny will no longer be serving his intended purpose when he is thrown away. She says the bunny will be sad. I told her the bunny will get to hang out with lots of his friends, maybe even some nice guys he met on the manufacturing line or some of the fun fellows he hung out with on the shelf at the store. She says he'll still be sad.

I really don't know what to say to that.

Here's the whole story: Bunny Recall

Fucking Asshole

Thanks for driving drunk, Mr. Asshead.

Thanks also for smashing my van while I'm driving with the baby actually on-board.

Thanks. Really.

Last I checked your wiper isn't supposed to be inside the fucking car. Neither is the back window. The paper thing which appears to be a french fry wrapper is actually an 8-speed bike cassette for the rear wheel. In the box. Which is destroyed. Like my van. Fucking asshole.

How hard do you have to hit somebody to compress the whole length of the van so that at first glance the rear end almost looks normal save for the smashed in hatch? The frame is buckled, the suspension is fucked. The rear fenders are too close to the tires which are also too close to the front of the van. Fucking asshole.

Little Miss Sunshine

I don't even know what to say here.

I'm still fucking laughing and the movie's been over for twenty minutes.

So, yeah. If you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine yet go out and get it. Watch it. Make sure you pee first or you'll need to change your pants.

Stick it in the Slot

Someway back (can't have been too long ago, cuz my foot is still in this fucking GIANT BLACK VELCRO BOOT) I mentioned about a new washing machine.

As in many cases, the new washing machine did in fact replace an old washing machine.

I am back today to show you pictures of the old, quarter-eating, non-spinning washing machine.

Here you go:

There it is, sitting by the trash cans. Even before we moved it out there, the front was already kicked off of it. I'm kinda sad you can't see the sign taped to the front. "Do not put feet on washers," it said. I'm guessing people didn't listen or else the front wouldn't have banged around all the time like a wounded asshole.

Here is a bigger shot showing the fancy Computer Control Pad and the quarter slot.

If you open the lid (which required some prying) you can flip a button which lets you reprogram shit. I only ever figured out how to make it not take quarters. But it only stayed that way until the power went out, then I'd have to fix it again.

Pleas write soething else!

It has been brought to my attention that Pleas write soething else.

What are these Pleas? And how is a verb able to write?

As for "soething else..." I guess I can't be too surprised. What else do you suppose a poor little Plea, struggling with pen in hand, should manage to write?

So, I will now share this with you all. Please spread the word.

The Pleas are able to write "soething else."

I wonder what kind of paper they used...

How important is Snacko?

snacko serves snack soup

snack soup is wholesome goodness

snack soup is a good friend of mine

snack soup is very liberated

snack soup stands up to opression and tyranny

snack soup is the source of freedom in war-torn countries.

snack soup is the breath of life in a firey building

snack soup is a parachute when you find yourself ejected from a spacecraft

All's not quite so well.

I am on drugs. Currently it's Oxycodone which is secret generic slang for Percoset. Priorly it was Hydrocodone which is generic slang for Vicodin. Both are good.

You see, about four hours after we achieved our new washing machine, my right foot started hurting. To properly describe the sensation in my foot you would need to imagine what it would feel like if you dropped a washing machine on your foot.

HOWEVER.

I did not drop a washing machine on my foot. I'm sure of it. I don't recall doing any wrong whatsoever to my foot. But it's damn busted nevertheless.

Actually, it's not busted. I got x-rays. Here are x-rays:




The x-ray came back negative for breaks and positive for nothing wrong.

So they said maybe it was a STRESS FRACTURE. And I got sent for a BONE SCAN. I will have to post the bone scan pictures later because I didn't scan them yet - but trust me -- they are definitely worth posting because they are some strange shit.

And still they show nothing is broken.

But my foot hurts, so I get to take pain medicine for a week and then wear a dumb foot boot for two weeks.

I'm really glad we didn't spend the money for FREE DELIVERY of that new washing machine.

All's well.

We got a new washing machine.

Brand spankin' new. Our old one took quarters. This one doesn't. I could get the quarters out, or even set it to not take quarters but it still only had 6 buttons so you couldn't run just part of a cycle. And if the power went out (like it does here in the sticks) then it went back to requiring $0.75 to do a load.

Our old one didn't have any dents. This one does.

Our old one didn't have a whole front panel thus leaving the guts exposed. The new one has a front. Which is dented.

Brand new. In the box. Dented. Thanks, Home Depot.

The better part is that the right rear corner looks like sombody dropped it off of a fucking fork lift about two or three feet too soon. Thanks, Home Depot.

But it works, so who gives a shit.

It fills up with water. It is not anything at all near as noisy as I expected a $300 washer to be.

AND. It's one of the four top-rated in the ACTUALLY WASHES CLOTHES WELL cagegory of Consumer Reports. The other ones cost $599, $999, and $1099.

So that was an easy decision. I guess the $700 discount is automatically figured in when they slow down the truck and kick it out the back rather than actually stopping to deliver it to the store.

And now I feel slightly less worthless but I really wish my wife would stop asking me "So what's dinner going to be?" every two fucking seconds.

never gets finished

Last night I was revisited by an old feeling. It was one of those I really didn't miss having.

Last night was the first time in a very long time the thought crossed my mind that it would be easier to just fucking end it all.

It didn't come along full-formed with a plan, but it was there and it didn't go away for quite a while. Actually, it's still kinda hanging out in the back of my head almost like it pulled up a chair and decided to stay for awhile. I think it still has its coat on, tho, so maybe I can kick it out today.

Maybe I'll come back and edit this later to try to go through what brought about this feeling. It might be helpful to me to spill my thoughts out. Maybe not. Who knows?

Inspiration can strike anywhere

Burnt out signs may make for good album titles:

INTE TIONA
FURNITU

Holy oldshit, Batman!

D'ja ever notice how when a band plays a song sometimes (most times) it's faster than on the CD? This is the result of syncing the CD track to the faster live performance and using everything under the sun to disquise the fact that you only shot with one camera and you have to keep backing up a few frames to line up the lips.

Like it really matters.

It also benefits from fantastic video capture software and a fabulous 3rd generation VHS copy of the live show. And it benefits even more from the fact that Eyes Wide Shut was playing on the TV so every time I stopped the tape the computer kept capturing... um... other stuff.

And that's some squub guy on bass. For sure.

And you better know I bought that S.O.D. shirt from Billy Milano himself. He's a hell of a salesman.

"If a fat fuck like me can fit into an XL then a fat fuck like you won't have any problem at all."

How can you turn down a line like that? He got my $20. I got a shirt and had to cut off the sleves to fit my fat self into it.

Then later I got to see him sing about FUCK THE MIDDLE EAST.

But the biggest tragedy is that you can't see my pants.

They were made of cut-off pants.

How many days until...

1. I am not ready for Christmas. Somebody else is.



2. Did I mention about The Beatles' LOVE thing? I can't stop listening to it.

I realized why it sounds as good as it does (then I went and verified by finding some interviews with George & Giles Martin...)

When this stuff was initially recorded, the technical limitations of the time meant that these songs were recorded to 4-track tape -- at least up through Sgt. Pepper's. By the White Album they were up to 8-track recording.

But the majority of this stuff is from 4-track masters. Since there are more than four things recorded, there was a lot of jockeying and jostling of sounds. Sometimes things were recorded at the same time though a mixer to one track on the tape. More often, The 4-tracks on one tape were mixed down to 1, 2, or 3 tracks of a fresh tape so that there was more room to put overdubs - like strings and vocals and other guitars.

All the past Beatles releases have been from the final 4-track master - after all the bouncing and combining had already been done. This tape could be three or four generations removed from the original tape. Meaning that whatever was recorded first -- likely drums, guitars and pianos and things -- has been COPIED three or four times.

How does it sound when you copy a tape on your stereo? How about when you copy a VCR tape? Then what happens when you copy it again? And again? At what point does it look too shitty to even watch?

Granted -- the equipment used at Abbey Road is a far cry from the home dual-cassette deck, but it's still a copy of a copy of a copy and by the nature of the medium it loses some gloss and sparkle with each copy.

NOT ONLY THAT -- but these final 4-track masters are what the original records were duplicated from, what the CD's were duplicated from... They have probably been played more times than any other tapes in the history of modern recording. Playing tape degrades tape -- plain and simple. It wears out.

So our good friends the Misters Martin went back to the ORIGINAL TAKES. Before the bouncing and combining.

They imported the four tracks from that first tape into ProTools. They went on to the next tape and added whatever overdubs it held. And the next tape. And the next tape.

This way, instead of only have four tracks to work with on say, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, now they have eight or ten, or more. And all the generation loss is gone. And it's very likely these tapes HAVE NOT EVEN BEEN PLAYED since the day they were recorded and then bounced to another tape. Sure, Mark Lewisohn may have played with some of them when he combinated all the Anthology stuff, but he tended to work with more completed things, so there's gotta be stuff that hasn't been touched since 1964 on there.

And it sounds AMAZING.

I want more.

Giles Martin's next task should be the creation of 5.1 mixes of the whole fucking catalog. Thanks. I'll be waiting for that right over here.

I'm stunned. Floored. Holy shit.

I must be living in a cave or something. Up until now I'd only heard a few rumblings about The Beatles: LOVE project.

This project somehow involves legendary Beatles producer George Martin, his son, Cirque du Soleil, and the original recordings made at Abbey Road Studios during the 8 year period the Beatles were active.

I had heard a small rumbling about somehow mish-mashing songs together and making a new album, and I really didn't think much of it. They're always trying to grab more money from Beatles fans around the holidays, so I pretty much dismissed it as another throw away.

But today I heard it.

And all I can really say is...

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

For real. I put the disc in the car while I was driving earlier today but I had someone else in the car, so I turned it down to just barely audible and didn't really note much detail on the first half of the thing.

But on my way home from work today, I was alone. I let it play from where it was and turned it up so I could really hear it. And at some point I looked at the CD player and noticed it was on track 11. It started playing John Lennon's demo recording of Strawberry Fields. At least I'm pretty sure it was the demo version featured on Anthology.

And the first thing I noticed was the fidelity. It was unreal, like I was totally immersed in the sound of this man and his guitar -- a sound which was recorded seven years before I was even born. This sound, as old as I know it is, sounded like it was recorded five minutes ago, it was so alive and real... but before I could marvel any more about the overall sonic quality of the thing, I realized the studio recording of Strawberry Fields was now playing. But it still had the vocals from the demo. Music from the studio version. Vocals from the demo - which was cut with one mic in a Spanish bedroom recording a voice and guitar. Over the studio music. And it fucking works. It's like magic. And it just keeps going, on and on. Songs seque into songs and parts from the wrong songs flow in and out of the thing and it's all in key and sounding... I dunno... RIGHT. It sounds right.

It sounds like what would have happened if these songs had been recorded now and The Beatles not only had full access, but the whole bag of skills, to twist and edit their music in a modern digital workstation.

BUT IT DOESN'T SOUND FUCKING DIGITAL. The sound of it utterly crushes me.

The songs here are presented in a more modern light. The odd stereo panning of the old songs -- which was never an artistic decision in the first place, it was purely commercial so that consumers with a mono record player could still listen to the Stereo version of the LP -- is tossed away. The songs are mixed with a modern stereo image in mind. Drums and vocals are firmly in the center of the image. Guitars, bass, pianos, and all kinds of shit flitters around on the outer edges of the speakers.

These songs done this way are powerful. They certainly don't sound 40 years old. The edits and layering are astounding. Not only is there more going on than you could ever absorb in a single listen, but it's also presenting things in a new light so you're hearing things which were buried way down in the original mixes shining through loud and clear.

Do yourself a favor (and contribute to Mr. McCartney's next tropical island) and go get a copy.

Going solo

I tried. I really, really tried.

But I think I found the key to the whole thing.

See -- last year when I did NaNoWriMo, I had other people in my immediate circle doing it, too. I could check their stats and see that they were creeping up on the big lead I created early on, so I would write more.

After week 2 when I hit the wall, I could check stats and see I was completely caught-up to and passed by friends. So I really had to write more.

This year it was just me. Only me. No other stats to check, no nagging voice in the back of my head saying, "open it. type. every little bit helps."

This year I was looking for big blocks of time to write big blocks of text.

I found one such block over Thansgiving -- I knocked out 5,000 words in just over two hours one evening. I did a thousand more the night before that.

But, when added to the 7,500 words I had prior to that, I only manged a total of 13,684 words for all of November.

So I've got the first quarter of a story here... I dunno when I'll finish it, but I need to figure something out before October of next year cuz I don't want this one to be on my mind when it comes time to start up a new one.

Hopefully next year my peeps will be back in action. I really hope so, cuz while I'm not really bummed out, I do miss the feeling I had last year when I actually managed to write a novel.