Word Count: 6009 Stress-level: Medium
Yeah, it's only been a few days. Sorry. I'm chomping at the bit a little. I
promise that i won't send you one of these every two days. Honest. I'm just a little panicked because i posted an excerpt (completely unedited, yikes!) of my book. It's literally the first 600 words i wrote.
So of course being me, i have to throw out a hundred disclaimers, just in
case someone actually goes and reads it.
Let's get it over with;
During the month before NaNoWriMo i studiously avoided planning the plot for my novel, any time a fabulous idea came to mind i abandoned it on the side of the road, crying. “I shun you!” I cried. There was this one idea that bugged me over and over, enough that i formed a mantra to counter it:
I will not write a deeply autobiographical story about unresolved past relationships
I will not write a deeply autobiographical story about unresolved past relationships
I will not write a deeply autobiographical story about unresolved past relationships
Now NaNoWriMo is here and i've sat down to pound out my new novel.
It's a deeply autobiographical story about my unresolved past relationships.
The lead character is, of course, a thinly disguised version of me. Some of
the events in the story are ground up versions of highly disparate events in my past, sort of mashed together in a devil-may-care (read: horribly biased) fashion. I even have myself as another secondary character in the book. What am i doing? I wrote myself into my own book as two different characters! Gawd! I'll be looking forward to winning the “most self obsessed writer of the year” award in December. But see, it's cathartic and metaphorical and…
Ah, never mind, it's hard to explain.
Sigh. Ah well. At least i'll get it out of my system. Right?
There is one thing though. Playing the IF game, you must know:
IF i finish this novel and
IF i don't immediately burn it and
IF i decide to take the time to edit it and rewrite it and
IF i decide to format the book, design a cover, and self-publish it through
a shady print-on-demand company and
IF you actually get one of the something-like ten copies i have printed.
I want you to know one thing.
I am not now, nor have ever been, a drug dealer. This is key to keep in mine if you read my novel. I was not a drug dealer in real life. Got it? Me + Lots of Drugs = Did not happen.
Also, and equally important, I have never taken heroin, so it would be impossible for me to be a heroin addict as is the character in my book. No
seriously, Mom, it's just a story.
I don't know why i'm a heroin addicted drug dealer in the story! It just
seemed like a good idea at the time! Look, it's metaphorical, it represents
the deeply seated unacknowledged anger problems i had at the time… Or
something like that. Well, it also gives me an excuse to write half the
story as pretentious surrealist drivel. Oh, this is really cool, i'm also
going to write half the novel in first person present tense and the other
half in third person past tense. Clever huh? (sheesh, when did i turn into
such an artsy dork? “I'd like to thank the academy for this award which is
about me, me and me.”)
While i'm at it, since i posted the opening scene of the novel on my
NaNoWriMo account. I should mention, THIS NEVER HAPPENED. IT'S A STORY! Mom stop crying. (Although it is true that there really was a wonderful Greek restaurant where i used to live back in Chicago.)
Ok, i'm going back into my writing cave.
