Word Count: 0 Stress-level: High
So tomorrow i'm gonna start writing a novel.
As i write this i realize is that this journal may not actually be as funny
as J and i's tour journal proportedly was.
It's much easier to make comedy out that one time when a bear tried to roll our truck over to eat us, than it will be to make you laugh when i'm whining about how hard it is to write a coherent sentence, how much my butt hurts and dammnit i'm out of Cheetoes.
I've been diligently preparing for my writing extravaganza. Amassing bags of salty food, 400 hours of vocal-less music, and telling everyone i know that they can't count on me for anything, at all, ever, for the next month.
I've even made a sign for my door. it says:
I'M WRITING
Unless the house is on fire,
back slowly away from my room…
Seriously, just walk away.
I explained to my housemates that i only want to be disturbed by sincere
offers of sex, wrist-rubs, or warm meals. I'm really hoping i don't spend
the next month in my bedroom though. I fully intend to play up the
“serious-writer-in-the-cafe” thing. Maybe i'll also make dates with people
where i sit near them, they don't talk to me (except to offer more Cheetoes) and i write write write. Doesn't that sound nice? Just think, when i'm big and famous, you can say, “You know that scene where the Pope is hangliding with Bono? He wrote that in my living room. I rubbed his wrists.”
Lately i'm starting to feel a bit like a misunderstood genius, or worse yet
a misunderstood not-genius. When i've mentioned that i'm going to write a
novel in November, i've gotten exactly two kinds of responses. They fit
perfectly into these two categories:
A.) Hey! You should turn your tour journals into a book, man those were
funny!
B.) Huh? Why? What makes you think you can write a novel?
Uh, so, why am i writing a novel? Well, it's probably not for fame and
fortune, I'm still shocked that when i mention the single best most famous
and generally smartest and coolest science fiction writer in the whole damn world, Ursula Le Guin, most people say, “Who?”
And don't talk to me about fortune. A good friend of mine who has published like 9000 novels still lives just as close to the poverty line as me. Orson Scott Card (who?) couldn't make a living off of writing even after he wrote what is probably the biggest sci-fi book ever.
Anyway, i think i'm mainly doing it so i have something to complain about.
At least this month i have an excuse to feel stressed out.
If you'd like to see how i'm doing, there will be a constant word count
posted on my profile here:
www.nanowrimo.org/userinfo.php
Tune in next week, where i will reveal the deep hidden secret; that writing
is really hard.
