The Ticker
Galaxy Quest even
Rushmore down
Ishtar up
Tranny Bars up
Saabs even
Minivans up
Los Angeles up
New York down
San Francisco up
The woman across the aisle is in her late 30s/early 40s and traveling alone. A brown sleeping bag bound by twine sits at her feet. She is not homeless or down on her luck. She seems respectable, like someone’s aunt. She is reading a romance novel. It is called “A Loving Scoundrel.”
While in City Lights I come across an interesting book on the history of romance novel cover art. I consider buying this for Mid-B and our Off The Radar book group. It is mostly pictures, though. Too many pictures and not enough Theory for Mid-B. Mid-B would accept the book graciously but cast the book aside in his mind. I put the book back on the shelf and slide the spine even with all of the others.
When I turned 24 I was living in Seattle and temping. I did some interesting jobs but mostly I was the fill-in office assistant, handling spillover data entry tasks and anything the regular admin assistant couldn’t get done. Once I worked for the Gas Company for about a week and I was the only guy in the office. Everyone in there was female and they all read romance novels. I thought about writing a romance novel for fun because it was all formula and because it might be a lark for someone with superior intelligence (?) like me. I “borrowed” a book (they were lying around everywhere) and took it home to do research. I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. I realized I wasn’t capable of writing a romance novel. I didn’t believe in it like they did. I wasn’t able to work on projects I didn’t believe in and make them good. Romance writers believe in their material in a way that I don’t—and that makes their books good (to their readership). Garry Marshall believes in “Pretty Woman.” He believes in its schmaltz, its simplicity, and its misogyny. He believes in the whore turned princess fairy tale. He believes that clothes make the man (and woman) and that shopping at Beverly Hills boutiques is the route to enlightenment. I could not fake my way through directing “Pretty Woman.” I do not believe in it.
This is all to say that I’m starting another ridiculous project—the novel project. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo I’m going to bang out a draft of a novel by the end of November. I’ve been freewriting over the last few days and have a basic plot structure. We’ll see what happens. It will be called “Strange Weather.”
If anyone else is interested in writing along with me this month (Dr. Write?) please let me know. We can slide behind on our word count together. Or maybe not!
12 comments:
ok. i'm in. i want to start a new novel about dissociative disorder and Hemorrhagic fever (or maybe the bird flu since Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake has a lot of hemorrhaging in it).
How does this blog go writing work? Will Dr. Write play too?
I'm not actually bloggyballsy enough to write fiction in a blog format (yet). Mid-B and I talked about this a little. Asking your readership to plow through 2,000 words of free-associative dreck every day is a little much...and would numb them forever, I think.
What we could do is start an ad-hoc team blog and then make it mandatory to check in there every day and report how you are doing on the novel (page count, morale, jokes, gossip, that sort of thing). That might create some accountability...I don't know.
Aha. Sounds good. Plus, it will give my blog purpose and shape--something it severely lacks.
Well, then. I'll write something and post the stats.
I want to be in. But I'm so lame these days. I never have time to write. But maybe I could make time. Like now. Or now.
I promised my brother I'd do NaNoWRiMo this month, but then he and his wife decided to have a baby this month. I've been trying to decide whether I should still do it--but I have no novelish thoughts (no plot, no characters) in my head.
Come on, you guys. You can do it! Just an hour or 90 minutes a day. Writing a novel is like having a baby (trust me, I know a lot about this): There is never a "convenient" time for it.
I'll put together a team blog site for November novelling purposes and send everyone invites. Hopefully, we can get a few of us doing this.
Okay, where's the blog? It's November! Today's word count: 753. My goals, and my sights, are low.
So I made a team blog at http://novelnovel.blogspot.com.
I sent out invites to Lynn and Lis but don't have Nicole Richie's info.
See ya!
I am Nicole Richie. nikwalk@msn.com
I'll go check in now.
"Diamond studded drill bits! What kind of fancy talk is that?"
Actually have you seen that Monty Python skit where they do a DH Lawrence reversal and have the working-class sounding guy be the writer and the high-falunting sounding son be the person who wants to be a miner?
I always liked the sketch about the game show "Summarizing Proust," where they must summarize all seven volumes of "Remembrance of Things Past" in about fifteen seconds. Hilarious.
Jeez, I am not in favor of this novel writing extravaganza if it means you aren't blogging on the front porch. Where's your sense of responsibility, man?
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