voting – Deborah Makarios

New Zealand has a history of strange elections. That time the Prime Minister called a snap election while pickled to the gills, for example. The time when two parties who respectively got the support of about 1/15 and 1/21 of the enrolled voters got into government.

And yet, despite this history of oddity, I was nonetheless Yours Truly Baffled last night when I read in the news that seventh place in Bug of the Year went to Powelliphanta superba.

Which is a snail.

A large dark snail shell lying among small plants. — P. superba staying in and having an identity crisis.

This is even wackier than a bat being voted Bird of the Year. Birds have wings, bats have wings. Bugs are the Things With Many Legs, snails are…(checks notes) legless. So legless, in fact, that they’re gastropods, i.e. the Things Which March On Their Stomachs.

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Yep, this is the year I take the plunge and try my hand at NaNoWriMo – properly, this time.

Two years ago, you may recall, I did what I called a PseudoNaNoWriMo. (Side note: It turns out you can sign up on the NaNoWriMo website and do all sorts of variations on the theme quite legitimately: just mark yourself down as a Rebel.)

Let us be honest: rewriting a pre-existing draft is much easier than beginning from scratch. On the other hand, with any luck there won’t be any major earthquakes, dramatic storms, surgeries or illness this time round. I hope.

As soon as I decided I was going to give it a go this year, I realized three things.
One: I need at least a month to prepare, not being a successful pantser (there goes October).
Two: I need to finish the first draft of The Wound of Words first (there goes everything before October).
Three: I don’t know which project to pick.Continue & Comment

Tag: voting

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