Things I found while editing a Nanowrimo novel.

Nanowrimo is an organization that promotes writing a novel during the month of November. I have written four of these Nanowrimos.

"Chicago Sundries"

"Untitled Book about China" (Not to be confused with my unproduced screenplay, "Beijing Driving Academy.")

"EE"

"The Five Books of Krinsky" (which is available on Amazon.)

The Five Books is not doing all that well statistically.

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,758,975 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
• #1387 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Jewish
• #2864 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Religious & Inspirational > Jewish
• #22497 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature

On the other hand, it has an average 5 star review and sells for 2.99.

I am revising EE which I hope will be a cross between Kurt Vonnegut and "The Hunger Games." Especially "The Hunger Games." So remind me not to kill off my main characters in Book 1.

In the course of editing, I found a poem by Ben Jonson.  He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and probably hated Shakespeare's guts.

Here is a quote attributed to him. "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand".

While majoring in Comparative Literature of the University of California, I studied Ben Jonson. If Shakespeare is Michael Jordan than who is Ben Jonson.  Maybe Clyde Drexler. A Hall of Fame player, NBA and Olympian champion (on the Dream Team) no one talks about Clyde the Glide any more. 

So to, with Ben Jonson.                            

Ben Jonson

Clyde Drexler

This is the Ben Jonson poem I found in "EE."

My Picture Left in Scotland

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,

    For else it could not be

               That she,

    Whom I adore so much, should so slight me

And cast my love behind.

I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,

       And every close did meet

       In sentence of as subtle feet,

       As hath the youngest He

That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

       O, but my conscious fears,

               That fly my thoughts between,

               Tell me that she hath seen

       My hundred of gray hairs,

       Told seven and forty years

    Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace

    My mountain belly and my rocky face;

And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.

What my character concluded from this poem, "Or in other words, I was too fat and old for her."