Wow. I know I've dissed Tom Wolfe on the site before and even mentioned him in How to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, but I had no idea just how bad I Am Charlotte Simmons was in this respect. I mean, I skimmed the novel at work and was left cringing, but the passages in this article just drive my point home in HARDCORE fashion. For all of the cheap tricks I used to squeeze 50,000 words out of my novel, I don't think I ever used the same word four times in succession. Bloody bloody bloody bloody hell.

By the way, for those of you who haven't read my article yet, here's the Wolfe mention:

Seriously, you really should read that piece. 😉

In other news, my webhost is running a hosting promotion that I'm really tempted to jump on -- see, this is where they get you. For the past year (and actually for the next two), most of the scary-crayon.com hosting costs are free, in that I only pay an annual fee for the domain name and additional costs whenever the bandwidth exceeds 5GB per month (which has been happening quite often these days, actually). Now, however, they're running a $9.99 a month plan (usually $19.99, but it's 50% off for preview package holders) that features a whole boatload of crap and I'm seeeriously tempted to hop on. Among other things, the plan would come with the free registration of 5 domain names and 25GB of bandwidth a month -- more than enough to cover SC and even more sites, if I wanted to make more. On the other hand, even when it runs over by quite a bit, SC's never cost me more than $8 a month, and usually the coast is around $1-$5. And it's not like I'm rich or anything! (Not to mention that unless I hear differently by the end of the day, today will be my last full day of employment at the community college!) $120 is a lot, and I would like to be able to move to NYC one of these days. But it's so tempting! I dunno what to do! We'll see.

Thoughts? Comments? Post 'em! And ja for now! 🙂