I posted some 7,634 words today to my secret NaNo blog/word counter. Almost every one of them was typed on my Palm so I can't say for sure they're all from today, but either way that's not unimpressive considering the lack of progress and motivation that has characterized this venture this month.
The pieces were all in place for one of those rags to riches tales, of my triumphant ascent from faceless drone to a high salaried position behind a desk in a corner office. I had even worked a couple stints in various mail rooms, come to think of it. But the signs were wrong, the pieces dashed. I was back at square one, albeit with a bunch of clothes I’d gotten pretty cheap and a discount card that was probably good for some time yet.
So begins yet another chunk of my second stab at a novel for this month, a last-ditch effort to salvage NaNo and come out with my dignity semi-intact.
1,407 words today... I'm trying to be optimistic, and verbose at the same time. Neither is working out too well at the moment.
So it's the day after Thanksgiving, and I took the day off. Not for any particular reason or activity (Jessica needed to work today, after all) but just because I could.
So what should I be doing? Today's a big day for shopping, but I want nothing. Today I should be thankful for stuff, which I guess I am but not so much that I need to write it down.
Writing. That's what I should be doing, as I am several tens of thousands of words behind on my novel. So writing I did, starting an entirely new 'novel' that is mainly recollections of my dreams, some fictionalized and others not, and woven around them are contemplative pieces about my hopes and aspirations, at least career-wise. This is pretty high-concept, I must admit, especially considering that my first attempt at a novel this month was about "Killers from the fourth dimension".
I still think that book has some legs (as they say) but I don't really feel like getting behind it at the moment and giving it a big shove.
To say that I was discouraged today about my so-called novel would be an understatement. To say that "I am not going to pretend that I’m not doing so well with my novel." as I did Monday is a bad double negative, and in fact an incorrect statement. I'd meant to say that I wasn't going to pretend that I wasn't doing badly with my novel, which in fact I was. Doing badly with my novel, that is.
I am, of course writing this several days from the date that is above this. I left this as a draft and returned to it only after having given up on said novel, attempting to write another (which I also abandoned) and having written two other entries about such (this and this).
This whole lack of motivation/bad novel thing did not make me happy. As such, in Monday's entry I pretty much trashed Bruce Sterling's Zenith angle, and he dropped by my site within hours to leave me words of encouragement.
Seeing his name in my email (I get a copy of every comment before you ever get to read them), I was totally deflated. Here was a guy whose book I'd said was "very, very bad" and he had seen it. In retrospect the book's not very, very bad, but it's not great. I wrote the words in question mere minutes after putting down the book, the last chapter of which I'd sped through due to annoyance and a nasty headache.
For what it is, and that is a fictionalized look at events parallel to the paradigm shift (sorry, just had to use that phrase) up to and after the 9-11 attacks from the perspective of a practicing geek, the book works. It probably feels more dated now that some of the principal political players have been re-cast as evil, and all the more so since there hasn't been any more major terrorist happenings in the intervening years. At least, not on American soil, where it matters.
So Bruce, thanks for stopping by and for the kind words. I didn't hate your book, and I will in fact pick up others from the library.
Also, in the intervening time, another author dropped by and weighed in on the issue. He's Pauly D, author of Consumer Joe (soon to be made into a feature-length blockbuster film, or perhaps just a TV show) and he's stopped by here before. Nice to see you again, Paul! Now I feel bad for aggregating his blog and never visiting it to leave comments.
Shockingly enough these two aren't even the only published authors to have visited my little corner of the web lately. Lee Goldberg stopped by and commented on my entry about his book Unsold TV pilots. At least I didn't insult him too.
Incidently, I'd deleted that comment accidently, but was able to recreate it from my emails. Sorry about that, Lee. Stop by again some time, okay?
Well, I am not going to pretend that I'm not doing so well with my novel. I need to write over 45,000 words in the next week.
On the upside, I just read Bruce Sterling's The zenith angle and it was really, really bad. Not as bad as what I am writing, but Bruce is a pro. In a way it was a little inspiring.
Heh. There I go, splitting an infinitive, "to not be". I've pointed this so-called rule out to others but never really found it useful myself. When I split an infinitive, it is often for the same reason that I double a negative: to add emphasis or to be clearer. Does it matter? To me it does, but I would like to think that I try to be precise in my communications.
Hah. More on that later.
I just watched American beauty for the first time since I bought it, and it seems a little more, well, relevant this time around. It's rife with jabs at downsizing/efficiency experts, suburban intolerance, and home decorating tips. I'd elaborate more on what I found this time around except that I plan to get back to writing my novel tonight after a week's haitus.
Why am I doing it again? I've acknowledged that this one will likely be as crap as last year's, and yet I intend to do it. I'll be rushing to do so, also, but in the end only the numbers matter. In the end what will I have accomplished? Little, other than enduring a stunt I'd done once before.
So why do it? Am I trying to be cool? To chalk this up as a dubious accomplishment? I don't know. It's a stunt and I'm going to do it and I might even type a large chunk of it on my Palm (batteries willing) now that I've picked up the incredibly neat folding keyboard for it. That thing is a marvelous piece of engineering -- I'll just need to wait to see what it does to battery life. I'm open to finding any possible distraction to keep me from actually typing those remaining 49,000 words.