The Fable of the Weaver Ant

by Barry J. Northern

A family of weaver ants chanced upon a fresh young mango tree one day and decided to make it their new home.

It was not long before one of the family found a good leaf to begin the work of building a nest. He sought out the edge with his feelers and began to pull. His brothers and sisters saw him at his work and joined in beside him, adding their strength to the effort of bending the leaf, which was many times bigger than they were. They spoke to each other as they worked.

"We must pull this edge up to the leaf above us."

"I will lead a group to that leaf to help receive it."

"Collect the younglings, we will soon need their silk to bind the edges."

"1 - 2 - 3 - Heave!"

"You there! Go and recruit more workers!"

More of their brothers and sisters came and joined the bustling activity of construction. The chatter and noise of their collaboration created an atmosphere of joyous labour, and soon the leaves were bent close together. It was time for the chaining.

"Hold on to my waist, brother. I think the gap will take four of us to span."

"Reach out and grab my waist, sister, that's it, pull!"

Soon a chain of ants spanned the gap, and in this way the family could pull the leaves together so that the binding could begin.

Now one of the ants in the chain had been recruited by an eager sibling who had picked him up in his mandibles and brought him there to aid in the task without first checking if he was fit for work. The young ant had been up all night foraging for food, and was tired, and so as the chain made one last effort to bring the two leaves together he became exhausted and cried out,

"Help me! I can't hold on!"

"You must!"

"Don't let go!"

But though the young ant tried to hold on, his tired legs gave way and he let go of his sister's waist.

Despite every other ant in the group being strong and fit, once their weakened brother let go, they were unable to hold the leaves together. The leaves sprang apart, spraying the family of ants in a splash of turning bodies, thus illustrating that old proverb,

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link

The Fable of the Weaver Ant by Barry J. Northern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Hosted by The Internet Archive, download MP3here.
Music by Ricahrd Savino from the album, Mertz - Bardic Sounds, track 7 "Study", and provided by magnatune.com

The continuing fight against plagiarism

Many of us will remember the flash fiction plagiarism fiasco first discovered and reported by Angel Zapata over on his blog. Many of us shared and discussed this on our own blogs, proving that plagiarism is a hot subject for us writers.

Now that discussion has opened up to a wider audience. At the time I sent off some feedback to The Dragon Page podcast, and they have discussed the whole thing in a recent episode. They gave it top billing on one of their "A" shows, which is really good since most feedback gone through is discussed in their "B" shows.

You can listen to the show, and read the show notes, here: http://www.dragonpage.com/2009/11/17/cover-to-cover-382a/, which includes a link to Angel's original post.

Thanks Dragon Page!

NaNoWriMo : Now what? Advice on editing your novel

There's still a lot of great information and forum discussion going on over at the NaNoWriMo website, post November, including this interesting article about novel editing, which describes several ways of going about that mammoth and daunting task.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/nowwhat

One of the best nuggets of advice I picked up from this is that editing should be fun and exciting, because you are crafting your story ever closer into its final form. I think I'll try the PostIt note idea once I've finished the first draft.

NaNoWrimo Update : I won!

Hurrah! I've been using all my writing time on my Nano novel for the last few days, hence why I stopped doing the daily word count blog updates. I was seriously worried I might not make it yesterday when my word count sat around 43k. With over 2k written last night I was left with 4K today. I figured 2k tonight and 2k tomorrow, but I was worried about that deadline. Just exactly what time was it? They said local time, but what if it was wrong and I missed the deadline because of a time zone problem? I was worried enough to carry on writing. I drew out a long scene where the characters were ordering fish and chips, but it actually turned out quite well in the end I think. I'm not going to read anything back until I finish the novel. At 50K it's still only two thirds in or so I reckon. With Chrismas coming it's unlikely I'll keep up the frenetic pace, but I'll try to finish it before the end of January.

Anyway. I won! Hurrah! 50k in 29 days. It can be done!

Apologies

Sorry to everyone expecting a Friday Fable today. I've had several things happen at once, including being on some medication that has been making me extremely tired by the evening. I've been doing some work on my NaNoWriMo novel and updating the Nano website, but I've not had the energy to continue the Nano Blog updates here either.

I'm going to try to find the time to get to 50K words by Monday, so watch this space.

NaNoWriMo : Day Twenty-Four

Today I wrote 2,132 words, bringing my total to 40,104.

I also crafted a fake pineapple out of an old tin of coffee creamer, strips of cardboard, and poster paint, for my son's fifth birthday party on Saturday. It's been a productive day.

NaNoWriMo : Day Twenty-Three

Today I wrote 2,898 words, bringing my total to 37,972.

I wrote from five to six-thirty this morning, and from nine to ten this evening. I'm trying not to stay up so late because I have a busy week. I'll be keeping a closer eye on that average daily word count now that the month is drawing to a close.

Words per day left : 1,718