The Writer's Life 5/6 - Madness

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." - Robin Williams.

The madness that is political correctness continues. The Justice Department has banned the use of the words "felon" and "convict." The preferred terminology is now: "person who committed a crime" and "individual who was convicted." Leave it to government to pad things unnecessarily. No doubt these bloated phrases will bolster the self esteem criminals lack. As the elites insist, the lack of self esteem is the root cause of all evil.

A 7-year-old Houston girl managed to get out of an after-school program with a fake excuse she wrote herself, in large print with misspellings. The note says, "I want Rosabella to go too dus 131 today." Because of the note, she was able to take a bus home rather than participate in an after-school program. Rest assured that there will be consequences for the incompetence of whomever was in charge. Everyone is aware of the efficiency of the public school bureaucracy.

What's with the high lead levels in the drinking water in all these towns? And none of it is attributable to fracking. Imagine that. Rest easy, bureaucrats are on the case.

The foul weather has kept me indoors much more than usual, which has allowed me to make another pass through my novel in progress. I just finished the latest proof, which was more of a scan for the obvious errors that MS Word highlights. I've been adding sentences here and there to strengthen it. It's now 186 pages, 62,000+ words. I doubt it will expand much more. Curious as to whether the length is in the range of a novella, I googled it. A novel is 40,000+ words. It will be my shortest book by far. My main concern is whether it moves too fast through its six year span, through the lives of the characters. Alfred Hitchcock described movies as life with the boring parts cut out. I hope that will apply to Five Cents. I've been taking survey payments in Amazon gift certificates. I've accumulated $276 worth and expect to have more than $300 by the time I'm ready to buy copies sometime in January.

The floating book shop opened three hours later than usual due to the rain. Given the cold wind, it seemed a fool's errand until a gentleman came along and bought a book in Russian and, soon after, another bought three works of non-fiction, including an unauthorized bio of Rush Limbaugh. My thanks, sirs.

Vic's Short Works: http://tinyurl.com/jy55pzc

Vic's 5th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/okxkwh5Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tinyurl.com/l84h63j

Website: http://vicfortezzaauthor.my-free.website/