Word Counts and the Devil

It was another good week on the writing front. Having a minimum word count that's substantial enough to matter is really working for me. For some reason Book 2 is hard to write. It's going slower than it usually does. I always have a high word count in mind that I feel I should meet in a day. It's hard to explain, but this book requires a lower word count. It's taken a while to figure out and accept that. If I was doing this full time, it would all be different, of course.

I don't read a lot of what writers say about writing, but sometimes I catch an interview or a blog. I might read part of a book in which some writer is talking about writing. Word counts vary widely. Some seem impossibly low. I couldn't fathom it before. Now, a light bulb's gone on. It must depend on the type of book and the circumstances. My best day this week was about 1,800 words. The worst was around 11 or 12 hundred. The other days were in between. A "normal" word count for me is 2,000 with some days ranging to 3,000 or so, if there's enough time.

On to other things. I have a ton of YouTube channels I subscribe to and never watch. I have blogs I follow but don't often read unless there's a catchy or useful title. This week one of the blogs had a title that drew me in. It's by a Christian writer. At some point in the blog, the person confessed to not believing in a literal devil. What? Doesn't believe in the devil? How does that work?

In my twenties I hit a particularly rough patch where I started to wonder if God and the devil were really real. It was like God wasn't there. Life seemed not just hard but supernaturally difficult. One day it occurred to me that I believed in the devil. I could find no other explanation for the evil I was facing. But I was still alive, so he had to be restrained somehow. If the devil was real and restrained, then God had to be real, too, and restraining him. In a sense, the devil is proof of God.

How on earth can this person claim to be a Christian and not believe in a literal devil? He's in the news every day! If people don't believe in God, I can understand that. He's not flashy. He doesn't go around showing off. He's lucky to be in the news every week. But the devil is flashy. He does show off. I see his work every, single day without fail.

I kind of suspect that writer, who is neither young nor old, has never truly suffered yet.

On to the U.S elections. I ran across a picture that says it all.

A Feral Cat and Green Lint

I came across this story:  French Authorities Cover Up the Torture, Disembowelment of Paris Attack Victims. It's about the Islamic terrorist attack at the Bataclan music hall in Paris. As the title suggests, it's a little graphic. Governments withhold and filter information in order to control the populace. I prefer it when the truth is told, even if it's hard to hear it. This happens enough in the U.S. It's a shame to see it in France, too, and about something so important.

I've been feeding this feral cat for several years now. I named him Lynx. Most of the time he would eat and leave. Sometimes he would sleep for a while and leave. Last week he decided he was domesticated. He hasn't left since, which is causing a lot of friction with the outside cat. I took his picture as he was laying near the edge of the driveway.

He meowed, when I clicked to take it. I thought it was cute. I'm able to pet him now. He's very needy.


Book Stuff, etc.
I'm still seeing steady progress on Book 2, which still has no title. What is it called? I don't know. I've changed my writing approach a little. Like with the videos, mentioned below, there never seems to be enough time or energy. I'm trying to write on the side, and it's not always easy. This week I experimented with a minimum word count per day that's lower than my ideal word count. It seems to take some of the pressure off and makes it easier to write, once I'm at the keyboard. I had a good, steady week. I get more than the minimum done, so that's good. I may have to raise it.

A while back, I ran across a business that was being run more like a hobby than a business. Basically, it wasn't working. I have a video planned about it. I think talking about my observations and how I realized it was a hobby and not really a business would help people who want to turn a hobby into a business or help people whose business is floundering in a certain way. I was thinking about that this week. There was one simple change that needed to be made at that business that in my opinion would have turned things around, but the owner wasn't interested.
Maybe I need to think of writing more like a business than I already do. What if there was one simple change I could make that would boost sales? I'm going to have to think about that. Obviously, the first change that needs to be made is the covers. But there might be more that needs to be done.

When I was working on the "studio", I washed the green screen. I took a picture of the lint to post, but when I sent it to my computer, it never showed up. This is what green lint looks like.

I've been practicing to make some videos. There never seems to be enough time. When there's time, there never seems to be enough energy.

Is Truth a Crime?

This was a good week on the writing front. Before that I'd been battling an infection that drained my energy. My niece was in town for almost two weeks. But this week was almost back to normal. I'm getting closer to seeing the end in sight. I can always use prayers, of course.

Last week I didn't get to mention the attack in Texas in which five police officers were assassinated. Obama blamed the police. If you're a European reader and it's not reported there, almost everything he says about race is inflammatory. It's like his remarks are designed to create racial animosity between whites and blacks. Some people have figured this out.
I say that to bring up censorship. The media seemed allergic to calling the attack last week Islamic terrorism. The current president was born in Kenya and raised Muslim. He refuses to use the phrase Islamic terrorism. I've seen one story focusing on the Islamic ties to the attack. Several of the suspects in the attack attended a mosque.

What I think I'm seeing in Texas is an Islamic terrorist attack that's not being called that. The Fort Hood terror attack  was called "workplace violence" despite the fact that the Muslim terrorist shouted allahu akbar throughout the attack. It took the president six years to call that attack terrorism. Since he'll be out of office soon, he'll probably never call the one last week terrorism.

That brings me to the Nice attacks. American media was quick to say we shouldn't blame Islam or Muslims for that attack. Donald Trump was attacked by the media for "jumping the gun" for even mentioning the possibility. I read a French article about the attack. It talked about Islamic terrorism and how that's what the attack looked like. It referenced a terrorist who called for Muslims to attack people with cars, etc. (Which by the way, I was happy I could read. All that practice is finally paying off. I didn't have to look up many words. It was really nice.)

Today the American media stories about the Nice attack are about the driver's road rage conviction and about some other crime he committed. One article called it a "truck attack".

I hope that wasn't too rambling. My point is censorship. The current political administration has created an atmosphere in which the media is discouraged from reporting certain facts or saying certain things or using certain phrases. Some of the direct censorship is done though legal means by use of "national security". Some censorship is done by intimidation. For instance, news organizations get money from readers/viewers. Interviews interest readers/viewers. Administration officials selectively grant interviews based on how favorably a news source reports on the administration. If news sources fail to report certain things, they can get the interviews. Without the interviews, they lose money. The media censorship becomes self-censorship. Most of it takes place behind the scenes, though occasionally someone will speak out.
Sometimes reporters die mysteriously. This has nothing to do with the government.

A guy named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel kills a bunch of infidels, and the American media can't quite figure out what's going on. And I'm supposed to believe this is freedom of the press and democracy. When did telling the truth become a crime in this country?

But that's not all the news. Last week a 61-yr-old man in Ontario using only his fists got into a fight with a mother bear defending her cub. How did he fight that bear? Like a boss.

Equal Justice Under the Law?

I've mentioned my internet speed is low, and I need an upgrade. I check with my ISP every month or two to see if the switch I'm hooked into will be upgraded. With my ISP being in the local paper so much this year about this problem, it was looking good. They've received a $175million government grant to get it done after all. I talked to someone at my ISP. My switch is not on the schedule, which means in all likelihood it won't be done this year. :(

I found two wireless options, but they're available down the road and not where I live. One of the things I need the extra bandwidth for is uploading YouTube videos. I was hoping something good would happen to make that easier. I suppose I'll start making videos and just deal with the problems. What kind of problems? One of the channels I watch has sound glitches. The guy who runs that channel has to re-upload affected videos to make it go away. He said it takes forever. Sometimes he has to do it three times for a single video. I don't think my videos will be very short. But on to bigger things.

As you've probably seen, Hillary will not be prosecuted for her crimes, crimes that FBI Director Comey admitted to under oath.(Ignore that fact that Trey Gowdy looks like Legolas.) People have gone to jail for sending ONE email with classified material in it.Hillary sent over a hundred, and those are the ones they know about. Thousands of emails were scrubbed from her server. Even some Democrats are mad about this one. As far I know, there's someone in jail right now for sending one classified email. They need to let that person go.

The rich are above the law in general, etc. I didn't want to go into all that. I want to take you behind the curtain and show you something the mainstream media will never cover. http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/politics/joe-biden-not-running-2016-election/

That's Joe Biden last October deciding not to run for president after months of speculation. The speculation began when it looked like Hillary would be going to jail. The Democrats were going to run Biden instead. Then suddenly, he didn't run. At the time it didn't make a lot of sense. The FBI was onto Hillary. But she kept saying their investigation was no big deal and other things like that. She even lied and said it was a security review. The FBI does criminal investigations. It was a criminal investigation, and the FBI contradicted her publicly.

The Democrats would never have allowed her to run if there had been any chance she would be in jail or on trial. She would have been forced to step aside. It would have been too embarrassing for the party and too damaging to other Democrat candidates. Joe Biden(or Bernie Sanders) would be the candidate today. I have to conclude that the decision not to prosecute was made last October at the latest and Democrats were informed of that. Everything done in the investigation since then has been for the sake of completeness. If anyone objected the decision, the Democrats could point to an exhausting investigation and say that it's all over and done, let it rest. The proof that they knew ahead of time is that Biden didn't run.

I further conclude that Republicans have also known since last year that there would be no charges for Hillary's crimes and took advantage of it to beat her up in the press to improve their side's chances in the next election.

I hope this peek behind the curtain was enlightening. Personally, I need to be paying closer attention when politicians do and say things that don't make sense in case it foreshadows something they already know. The press will never cover these types of shenanigans. Backroom deals are being made all the time.

We live in a strange world. How strange? Imagine if you could buy a prosthetic tongue that would let you lick your cat. Available for pre-ordering now.

Cursed Blessings

Sometimes it seems life isn't fair. Things just don't go the way they should. It's like we're cursed. Sometimes it's not even our fault.

Psalm 59:3 For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD.

Bad things happen, and it isn't necessarily because of sin. In that verse it wasn't David's sin. It was other people sinning. It reminds me of generational curses. The Bible talks about curses being visited upon children to so many generations and blessings to thousands. It doesn't seem fair that people can be punished for something that happened several generations back. By generational curses I mean things like hereditary diseases, hereditary poverty, etc. Any kind of hereditary handicap that's physical or mental or emotional, etc. When something is chronically wrong or hindered in some area of life.

I've talked before about how my dad and two of my first cousins on his side were killed by medical professionals, all at different locations. It seems like a generational curse at work on that family line. Is there some sin a few generations back that we don't know about? Who knows.

What about all the blessings the Bible promises? There are tons of blessings, but personally, I'm having a hard time seeing them manifest. Is it my fault, or is it because of some generational curse? I found a really fascinating verse.

Malachi 2:2 If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

Blessings can be cursed! I don't remember ever hearing this talked about. People always talk about the blessings and how awesome life is supposed to be, and if it's not, it has to be bacause of some secret sin. Whatever. That's not what my Bible says.

I assume blessings can be cursed for other sins and not just the specific one mentioned in the verse. I assume it's a general principle that blessings can be cursed. This could really explain a lot. What if there are generational curses on blessings? Fascinating concept. That, too, would explain a lot. I'm not sure how to break a generational curse, especially when there's no idea what the sin is. Not very encouraging, is it?

That's something I was thinking about this week. I think it's interesting that blessings can be cursed. I thought it was worth passing along.


Book Stuff
If anything has been able to get in the way of Book 2, it has.