Art and Beauty

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  “But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke.” —J. C. Friedrich von Schiller. “Letters upon the Æsthetic Education of Man.” (1795)

NaNoWriMo report 1

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Here's a picture of my "Novel Bible."  These are the notes (so far) that I will be consulting as I write my novel in one month. 

I am learning very quickly.

I began with a more mathematical approach to this project, thinking that I could break the project down into smaller portions based on clean divisions of the overall project: 50,000 words = about 1667 words per day, or one scene per day.  I then set an initial goal of 1 chapter per week, or 5 chapters at the most.

Two words: "Epic Fail!"  Of course, I'd rather do this two days into the project, than later.

My first chapter was subdivided into eight smaller scenes.  I just finished one scene and realized that the scene in itself is one whole chapter!  If I squeeze eight scenes into one chapter, it would produce rather lengthy and cumbersome chapters.  If this pattern holds true, then my novel will be not five chapters, which sounds simple enough, but as many as 37 chapters!  That's a little over one chapter per day!

Perhaps the "Tolstoy" style would be appropriate here: five major "books" or parts, and the appropriate chapters accordingly by scene.  Sounds reasonable.

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