Day 21!

Well, with only a couple of hours to write, I certainly won't have a day like yesterday. My goal today is just to see how many words I can get in a couple of hours. I hope to get the standard 1,667 to keep the lead ahead of the goal that I have now. I am also going to writing about the ninja cows, so that should help!

Today's dare of the day comes from Archon_Huskie in the Fantasy Dares thread:

Here is my Dare for all of you.

I dare you to have you novel pass the Alison Bechdel Test.
1) You must have two named female characters.
2) They must have a conversation with each other
3) It must be about something other than a man (doesn't matter if it is a lover, brother, or king). 

That is all.

That is something interesting. I have just procrastinated looking into that idea. I'll help you out by having you watch a short video here. Knowing that I need to get more women into my stories, especially in stronger roles is something that I know I need to work on. This dare is good for me, and will help push me a bit out of my comfort zone.  It's not that I don't want a more feminine influence to my stories, it's just that I'm a man. Writing for men is more comfortable for me. I fear that spending a lot of time on female characters will just reveal how inadequately I understand women, or how they think. I fear that the feminists might be harder on me if I write women badly, than if I just didn't focus on them. On the other hand, risks are good in writing, right?

As far as tips on writing go, there is a great entry identifying 50 blogs helping people through NaNoWriMo. You can read that here. You could also visit my friend Chazley's blog, which is mentioned in that entry. I also want to thank my friend Eamon, who has been sending me articles about getting through the rough patches of writing this month.

One of the worst patches is procrastination. I better stop writing and start writing!

Wait...that was awkward, perhaps there's a better way.

Better stop blogging and start writing! (not perfect, but it will have to do for now. I have 1667 to write today!)