About this “novel”
Initially this was going to be about marketing assholes and the committee of 300 that didn’t work obviously so i just started writing random shit, the chapters and the prattle only sort of line up and it seems that a good half of this is just empty typing of me trying to stay motivated. Whatever. I guess i should explain that there are two large pieces of the book: the chapters, which tie the story together with tedious description, and the rambling sections that are largely without context but usually dont in the first person. This is sort of intentional, and they are sort of related, in the way the chapters are sort of related to each other. If you actually wanted to try reading it, i would suggest between alternating the chapters, but at athe time of this writing, i have only posted the first ten or so chapters, and have been mostly concentrating on sleeping, working and trying to fill the word count. As expected, i dont have any problems with this, the quality or organization because i am more determined to finish this damn thing in one turn of events or another before i am actually willing to just quit and say it sucks.
At least it can suck and i can say that I have made it through the damn thing. But on reflection, i think i might have had an easier time writing the first one, though i spent much of it very far behind. There are a few reasons for that. one is that i was a little better prepared, the other is that i was recycling a bunch of old ideas that i had at least been kicking around. The final reason is that there is a significant chunk of the book is written during some sessions of watching shitty movies with friends midway through in a last ditch effort to try to catch up (it worked). The second year went pretty well, but i had my time in november cut short. I quit when it made sense and never looked back, but i didn’t spend much time thinking about this one. C’est la vie, there is always next year.
Back to the structure. The final form should probably have the prattle section broken up by the double dashes that mark each section, they could probably be arranged to actually fit in with the story, but i havn’t though much of what they should be called. maybe interludes, or back story, i might actually just give them all letters and make a half assed attempt at ordering all of them in hindsight. Actually that seems like the right thing to do, though i imagine when i am actually done with this i wont want to look at this fucking thing for at least another year.
A final piece that i think was missing from this was humor, there is a lot of description, but without having anyone in the story at all fleshed out, except for maybe a basic description of how they look in the first scene, i feel again that i ahve just reduced to picking a single character and repeating their names as i describe a list of actions. i would probably be better at this type of writing if i tried it more than once a year, but i also felt a little scared and put off by trying to just have random shit happen. That of course has crept in the farther i have gone along in the book, but i think that is a natural evolution of the creative process. i remember vonnegut once writing that he was the type of writer who hammered out every sentence until it was perfect, and that other writers would write in drafts and edit. The former makes sense to me, but i would have a hard time writing in such a short period like that, and i dont believe he never edited his books after the fact, though i can appreciate that he probably didn’t rewrite whole sections of things.
Anyway, not much more to say about this. If you are reading this at all, it is unlikely you will make it all the way through the actual book, i dont think i ever made it all the way through any of the stuff i wrote before, but that really doesnt matter. I won’t excuse or apologise for any of this, i wont even say its not my best work, because i have written so comparatively little.
If you do bother reading this, i just want to say that all this self doubt is natural, and if you think of trying something like this, i hope being able to see what it looks like at the end might help you realize that being perfect, or good, or even readable are not goals of this project (national novel writing month), rather it is about trying to do something you havn’t or wouldn’t do normally. I write from time to time, and usually think it through and am quite pleased with it, but i do not write novels, and most of the time i would rather be doing other things, i have no aims to become a professional novelest or to be published, or to have people think i am a genius. I want to do this because it is difficult, and i dont have a lot of motivation to do it otherwise.
In the end, you dont have unlimited amounts of time, but it doesnt have to eb for money or fame or for anyone but yourself. And it doesn’t matter a goddamn bit what anyone thinks of what you do, the only reason to do something is because you want to, and you will only get to the point where you like what you are doing if you suffer the indignity of sucking at it for a while.