I’m at my parents’ house for Yom Kippur and I want a snack. But Yom Kippur is all about fasting and atoning for your sins, so I can’t have a snack.

Grumble grumble.

Anyway, last week I decided to start writing a novel.

It’s something I’ve tried to do several times in the past. One of the stories I used in my writing class this summer originally started out as the beginning of an attempted novel. (Maybe I’ll even turn it into one at some point.) And I tried National Novel Writing Month a few years back. Last week I was experiencing writer inspiration/frustration, and I finally decided to give it a shot again.

I started last Thursday, and I’m going to try to do a little bit each day, no matter how little. I think that if I lower the bar and just set a goal of a few paragraphs a day, it will be less intimidating and easier to accomplish.

I have no ideas for a plot. I just started with a sentence that seemed halfway interesting and took it from there. I don’t think I’m even going to use the sentence I started with, but it was a trigger for other stuff.

One problem (and it has been one throughout my writing life) is that I constantly second-guess what I’m doing or thinking of. “This idea has been done before, I read a book that used it,” or “This isn’t original enough,” or “Who wants to read another [xyz] story,” and so forth. But I’m trying to silence the voices and just try to write something that I would want to read.

This is not necessarily easy. I went to a book store a few days ago to find books about writing – there are a few that got good reviews on Amazon – but the ones I looked at were focused on writing what sells, as opposed to writing what you want. I put one book back on the shelf after reading a sentence that said something like, “Your main character must be likable and heroic. Nobody wants to read a book with an unlikable protagonist.” Confederacy of Dunces, anyone? I was annoyed.

I wound up picking up a book called Unstuck, about getting past writer’s block. I find that inspirational-type books on writing can really help get my juices flowing, especially since what I usually need most is confidence.

I’ve written about 2,100 words of this attempt at a book so far, which is already more than I thought I would get down. So that’s a good sign.

Anyway, you’re all forbidden to ask me about this writing project unless I say you can. I need to keep my novel-writing space private and protected from the world.

Which is totally why I’m blogging about it, of course.

Today I saw Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s new film about 1950s TV newsman Edward R. Murrow and his exposure of Senator Joseph McCarthy as a fraud. Great film, shot in lush black and white. There’s not much action – much (though not all) of the movie consists of Murrow, played by the excellent David Strathairn, orating from his studio chair. But those scenes are mesmerizing.

This NPR broadcast by Walter Cronkite from last year summarizes the episode and includes some great audio clips of both Murrow and McCarthy. I wasn’t familiar with Murrow’s voice, but after seeing the movie and listening to that audio clip, I can say that Strathairn gets him down pat – his intonation, his pronunciation, his cadences. He should get an Oscar nomination for this.

Great, great movie.

Idiotic quote of the month, for a whole bunch of reasons:

“If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole.”

– Former Senator Dan Coates, who is shepherding Harriet Miers through the Senate confirmation process.