Eccentric Flower:200911/4:30
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4:30
When I was young and foolish and made a collection of poems, most of which were bad, I called it "4:30." A lot of the poems had to do with, or were inspired by, insomnia and its depredations, including the title poem. It has been true since my late adolescence that if I am going to wake up and be kept up with a mental crisis of some kind, around 4:30 is when it's going to happen.
There is apparently something in my brain cycle right about then that comes to the forefront and gives me fears and hates and doubts and other bad things. Tonight I woke up from a dream where I was being intentionally rude to an old friend of mine at a party (in the real world, I haven't seen said friend since high school) and got stuck in the loop about fiction writing and I can't suppress it. By the time I sat down to write this, it was nearly five. It will be five-thirty when I finish. My eyes hurt. Hopefully when I've gotten it done I can go back to sleep.
It would be amusingly ironic to say I have The Writing Issue most acutely in November, but no. I don't and never have taken that peculiar November project seriously. At the end of this month many people will have written bad novels; many people will have failed to have written bad novels; the number of people who will have completed good novels will be so small as to be statistically insignificant. Therefore, not worth the brain effort.
What amuses me about National Novel Writing Month (its abbreviation is almost as odious a coinage as "blog") is that so many of the pep talks are focused on the physical process of setting down words, as if running a marathon and the trick is simply to pace yourself and not stop even when your legs are threatening to fall off. I have never been interested in traversing 26 miles because, as a technical exercise, I know I can do it. I don't say I can do it fast, but if you remove the time as a factor - say, if you don't mind that it takes you ten hours to do - then there is no question whether you'll finish. You could walk 26 miles at a fairly slow pace, couldn't you? Yet the writing advice always treats the November projects as if just accumulating word count is the hard part.
100,000 words in a month is less than 4000 words a day. 4000 words a day is - well, I won't say it can be dismissed lightly, but it's a question of writing time, not ability. 4000 words in a day for me these days is about two hours of writing time a day, nothing more, nothing less (assuming I want them to be reasonably coherent and not just random gibberish). If I sit at a computer and write for two hours, there will be at least 4000 words there. It's a fact. The question of whether at the end of the month I have 100,000 words anyone else in the world wants to read is, I notice, typically glossed over by the November boosters, if not ignored completely. They just want people to write novels (the exact reasons why are not clearly given). They say it doesn't matter if the novels are bad. I say this is the same mentality that leads us to not giving awards in school contest for first, second place etc but instead giving everyone participation pins. It is a solution that is not truly satisfying to anyone.
I am not one of these People Who Don't Write who don't write because they actually can't. I have proven I can write. I prove it nearly every day. I am proving it now. I am also not one of these People Who Don't Write because they write badly. I have a small collection of evidence, in the form of testimonials and on rare occasions remuneration, to establish that I can, when I am contributing more than half an ass, write well. No, I am one of the People Who Don't Write for reasons that you hardly ever see anyone else being willing to shine a spotlight on: Once you have written this novel, even if it is a good novel, what then?
Three-ring binder containing last set of incremental changes to Quarter Moon. Atop that, four test-reader copies of Exchange Student and one loose test-reader copy of the first third of Hell-Bound Woman.
They don't even make very good paperweights. Surface area too large in proportion to mass.
If I actually developed the necessary missing links to fill out the Ring stories into the novel they want to be; if I got rid of the ending of Hell-Bound Woman I don't care much for anymore that's keeping the latter two-thirds of it from being set forth; if I went back and added the second POV protagonist to Exchange Student needed to balance out the internal monologue of its young hero; if I dealt with the switching-narrative issues in Quarter Moon in a way that made it more palatable to other people - if I did any of these things or any of twenty other full-length projects that have never even gotten as far as these - then what would I have?
I am no longer interested in selling a book. Haven't been for some years. If there were a way for someone else to sell the book so that I could hide like Thomas Pynchon and never, never have to make any sort of promotional appearances of any kind, that might be something. But there isn't. (And don't use the word "agent." Shopping for an agent is, to me, possibly the most horrific part of the various processes I am lumping together here as "selling a book.")
I am interested in a modest pay-to-read or even a pay-after-reading-if-you-like tip jar system, but it has to take very small payments and not involve PayPal in any way (because they are crooks) - and I don't believe that exists yet, although give Amazon a few more years and who knows what will happen?
But mostly, the above paragraph notwithstanding, I am no longer interested in the cost-benefit analysis of writing a book. I could take those two hours a day - and those would be two hours of work a day; the only people who think writing every day is a lark are those who have never tried it - and I could produce a book, sure, and it might even be a good book, but if only ten or fifty or even a hundred people ever read it - although that would be very flattering to me - it would not be a good use of my time. Two hours a day for a month for that? Bless them wot read it, but no, not a good profit/loss statement.
And beyond that - if you will pardon my verging into the metaphysical - I am no longer at all sure that I am making any sort of useful or positive contribution to the world, even a very small corner of it, by writing. That is, I don't know that I believe my writing is doing anyone else any good, is accomplishing anything.
(I appreciate your past reassurances on this matter, and I'm not hinting for you to offer more at this time, so don't. I'm not negating what you say. I'm glad you think my writing is doing something worthwhile. But the problem is that I don't think that, and I'm not sure any amount of positivity from you will change that - although, as I say, I do appreciate it.)
My point is, I'm not sure there is a point. Not where writing is concerned. And that means sometimes I have to get up at 4:30 in the morning and shout that part of my brain down until I can get back to sleep. Which may be the lesser price to pay, I think.
It's 5:32. I think I can try going back to bed now.
N.B. This entry is about 1400 words long. Just for reference purposes.
Once you have written a novel, what then? Then the novel exists. There it is, existing.
If this is not enough motivation to write a novel, then I agree you probably oughtn't.
-- 13:04, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
although give Amazon a few more years and who knows what will happen
Oh, you mean like Amazon Payments? You can also publish e-books through Lulu.com.
-- 14:43, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
Mrissa, that is the crux. For me its mere existence is not enough motivation to write a novel - I thought it was once, but that was a long time ago - and therefore, as you say, I probably oughtn't.
And there the matter would stand, except I have something in common with real writers: The urge to write something that never nevernever subsides. Thus sometimes I have to placate this monster ... and sometimes, I wonder, is throwing an average of a thousand words a day (since adulthood) at it just to shut it the hell up really a good use of my time? Which use of my time stinks less?
-- 15:37, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
It'll put me in a weird category all alone when I say that, when I saw 4:30, I immediately thought you were going shopping on Black Friday. All I've heard lately is about stores opening at 4 a.m. I sit here at noon, not having ventured into the fray, as yet, but planning to.
I'm currently reading The Salmon of Doubt, a collection of essays from the computer of Douglas Adams. Each is a gorgeous, stand-alone vignette, and I doubt that many are over 1,000 words long. They were, in many cases, newspaper columns, but I believe your journal entries are columns of a sort. This use of time does not stink. You obviously have "something to say" and you do it masterfully. That's justification enough for 1,000 words per day.
-- 17:15, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
Oh no, Bunny, I would sooner piss in someone's holy water than observe Black Friday sacraments. The whole consumer extravaganza gives me hives.
-- 17:21, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
This is the problem I'm facing with Holidailies. I am no longer interested in "let's write something every day, no matter how sucky it is." I'm more interested in "Here's a motivation for you to write a little more than usual, and to give us something enjoyable." If I get my favorite bloggers writing 5 posts in a month for Holidailies, that's more fun for me than reading a knitting blogger who posts 30 times about yarn and socks, or an old-school journaller who now posts nothing but TV recaps (or worse yet, movie reviews, heh).
How to draw quality rather than quantity out of people? Good question.
I don't want to write a novel that I can't sell, either, so I'm totally in your corner on this one. Although I think if people want to participate in a project to get a novel written and feel good about themselves, more power to them.
But the biggest problem I have with my writing right now is that I can't muster interest in "do it for yourself." And yes, I do consider it a problem. I would like to write something that isn't a movie review and am pretty much stuck, and I think it's definitely because I'm in a work-for-pay mode, and am less inclined to write in a style that I'm less good at.
-- 21:24, 27 November 2009 (GMT)
About Black Friday... I go out among the throngs because it gives me pleasure to watch the many manifestations of the season, good or bad. Except today, there were no throngs. At Bed, Bath & Beyond there were more sales staff than customers. It was after 5 p.m., though. I hope there was more traffic early in the morning. Judging by previous years, it's going to be a lean season, retail-wise.
Okay, I know all about what the season implies and should be. But I believe it is what you make it. I get a kick out of trying to find interesting gifts for my friends and family. I like the colors, the lights, even the cheesy music. Today, I accidentally left a parcel beside a display of shirts at Macy's. Uh oh. Time to test Karma. I finally found the display, and there was my white bag, just where I left it. The season wins again. And so do I.
-- 02:52, 28 November 2009 (GMT)
Jette, it seems to me that the idea of the regular writing challenges is to reach the good parts eventually. To get into the habit of writing and so reach the sweet inspiration under the crust of stale mundanity.
I must say, though, that for me the inspiration usually reacts to resolution of not to write anything, as the well is dry and it is only dry and poisonous dust that comes up anyway.
-- 06:54, 28 November 2009 (GMT)
I'm not a novelist or even a writer of any kind of fiction, so I'm talking out my ass here (even more than usual), but I suspect that the "novel month" idea is to get people to focus on the activity. Being a novelist doesn't come with deadlines, and for me, work that doesn't have to be handed in is work that doesn't have to be done. I do know, as a professional writer and teacher of writing, that writing is like a muscle -- it gets flabby if you don't exercise it. Getting people to generate X-thousand words a day may produce 25X-thousand words of crap, but I suspect that by the time they get to Day 26 or more, there may be something worthwile that emanates.
None of that goes to the question of whether you should write. My answer to that is simple for me, though obviously not for you: Do it if you enjoy it (or will lead to enjoyment, such as the receipt of many dollars); don't do it if not. Another of my many philosophies is that if you're not enjoying something, there needs to be a really, really good reason to keep doing it. Selfishly, of course, I hope you do continue to write about anything that interests you. With a couple of exceptions (e.g., on-line gaming minutiae), I find it interesting, including the fiction -- Moving Parts is, to me, better than most of the short stories I see these days (though admittedly most of them are of the plotless, litfic New Yorker type of thing that I think we both despise). I think the Ring stories are also pretty good. Space-as-Western is a common-enough theme, but those are more a Space-as-Deadwood, excpet with likeable characters. But you are not my performing monkey, so selfishness aside, it's entirely up to you.
-- 18:28, 28 November 2009 (GMT)
Thomas:
First - fortunately I have forgotten ALL of my own the around 4 am poems, save a random snippet of "fridge humming busily in dark"
Second - I dreamed about you tonight. You were not rude to anyone in my dream, but very scared. And I would guess at least 10 years younger, if not more.
-- 11:43, 27 November 2009 (GMT)