Crenellated Flotsam

It’s going to happen.

In about six hours I’ll begin writing another novel, my fourth. As if that wasn’t scary enough, a witch just came to my front door and demanded candy! I was so petrified I obliged.

Spent (wasted?) a good deal of the day getting my novel’s website up and running. I dunno. Not too happy with it, but it will preserve for all posterity my efforts at writing Big Train Show. I have all the elements needed for a good story (char, theme, plot) but only time will tell if I have a story. I’ve gotten encouraging feedback, so perhaps it will delight all the blimp fans.

I’m a little less excited than I thought I would be, but a lot more hopeful. I took a nap this afternoon so I can be ready to begin typing at midnight, and I’ll see how that works out. I expect a page, maybe two, before I go to sleep.

So many people on the NaNo board have said great things about their efforts, I’m sure there will be lots of fun stories to relate and many winners. I’m glad for them all, and wish everyone the very best of kamikaze noveling!

It’s a gorgeous day, but I wasted it. I missed my bus this morning, the one that was expected to whisk me away to a writer’s meeting. Now I need to wait a week and to make more apologies. I’m always making apologies. I’m certain they get old, fast.

But that’s not the point. Here’s the thing about me and writing. I have it on good authority that I write well. I don’t doubt it, either. I’ve always been facile with words, literate, and able to string words together. A good portion of that is practice, but there’s some raw talent, too, that I believe comes from reading a lot and just picking up how to do things, how sentences should look and behave. Then, I’ve taken a few courses in copy-editing which have helped immensely with grammar. And, I’ve had several classes where I’ve learned to be concise and how to make my writing less lame.

With all that said, one would think I’d have no problems. But I see two necessities in writing. One is the language used, and that can be taught (it’s how I’ve learned). The other, though, is the more important: the content.

I can write well, but do I have anything to say? I can take someone else’s idea or story and make it read well, but can I carry off a novel on my own? I can write so people can understand what I’m saying, but can I come up with ideas that people will want to read? If I have something to say I can do it pretty well, but I beat myself up a lot about not having stories worth telling.

Now I need an injection of talent, of knowledge, of story-telling ability. Lots of books suggest ways to become creative, but crafting ideas into stories has long been my challenge. I can’t tell what’s wrong with my stuff.

I was always wondering about this. Now I know.

My Your Little Pony Name Is is Snowball.
Take My Little Pony Name Generator today!

I feel so left out. I wonder who decided that the two parties in power have all the answers. I wonder why more people are predisposed to believing the next election will be rigged than prefer either candidate. I wonder why, instead of disagreeing, so many people actively despise the opposition party. It all seems a tad too Orwellian for me, “Why, I’m a Demoblican. Only Demoblicans are good. I must hate the Republicrats and believe everything bad about them.”

Around five hundred million dollars is being spent to win the presidency. That’s obscene. I think I hate politics. I know I hate the pandering snobs running the two parties.

So I resort to writing silly fiction. I’ve gotten positive feedback about my blimp idea. I came up with that as a way of giving my main char his fifteen mins of fame, long since passed. I don’t know why, but I like the idea of a non-deserving has-been. It’s one thing to wake up this morning and think “I’m Steven Spielberg” or “Mick Jagger,” it’s quite another to wake up and realize “I’m Kato Kaylin.”

But this blimp idea so intrigues me that I may move up to the present. I’m not sure how it will work out with Sid receiving his fifteen minutes in the middle of the story, but it may prove worthwhile. I’ll need to think about that. I hope Minardi (my dog) is resting up. He may need to go on a lot of long walks as I mull this over.

Hooray! I’ve finally won!

The last twenty-five hits on my site have ALL been bots! I’m so proud.

I exist for the pleasure and sake of the machines.

I mean, I get ten times as many hits from Yahoo!, Google, Okami, et al as I do from human viewers who actually visit my site because they’re told to do so by authorities, but never before has every hit been a bot.

I remember one economist once pointing out that you can’t have service-based economy based solely on people delivering pizzas to each other. I wonder if you can have a blogging community based solely on bots indexing and tracking things no one ever reads.

Today I bought a pack of cigarettes thinking they’d make life enjoyable and remove my demons. To my surprise, they had no such effect.

It’s happening, again. Not like deja vu, though, since I remember the other time very well. It’s not hard, it was just a couple days ago.

We’re having another rain event. It’s also been called a severe weather pattern and shower activity. I really don’t think anything of value is added to the occurence of rain to add any events, patterns, or activity to the term. I guess it sounds fancier, more scientific, but this is the kind of wording that dilutes the impact of the easily understood and completely useful term rain.

I suppose if you’re pulling down a hundred or two thousand a year you have to justify that somehow. It’s not good enough to say “it’s raining,” not when Storm Watch 2004 can be called and you can make the lesser weather people and reporters stand on corners in slickers and attempt to create some drama and value from water falling out of the sky.

My favorite moments of local news are always following earthquakes or fires. Without a script to read, these attractive reporters are surprisingly adept at filling minutes with nothing remotely resembling news or knowledge. I think, I hope, most people would expect there to be broken windows, smouldering remains of once-proud structures, the debris of disaster. I think none of us is the better for having it seen and explained to us.

Today they had a closeup of water rushing down the gutter into a drain.

I got all excited last night, but it was for nought. I thought, for a moment, one of my neighbors was rushing the season and already had their Christmas Lights up. I considered noting the date in my calendar since this would be the earliest evidence of Christmas in my personal record book. It’s not even Halloween yet!

Alas, it was a Halloween display. Now that someone’s begun the noxious habit of stringing orange lights all over their eaves, I can only expect more to do the same. The worst part of it, of course, is that sooner or later *I* may get roped into this, too.

When I was around twenty a friend and I were already discouraged by all the Christmas decorations. At that time, and I think it even made the paper, everyone on the street had a seven foot candle on their front yard with their family name placed in front. I have no idea how the Jewish people felt about this, but my guess is they meekly complied since many of the names were similar to ones of my Jewish friends. Oddly, one of my better friends, Chris Goldstein, surprised me by being Catholic. I discovered that late in our relationship.

But I digress. Anyway, another friend and I were lamenting the Christmas decorations. What we wanted to do, and the idea that struck us as the funniest, was to begin decorating our lawns with Thanksgiving items. We started off deciding to cover the lawn in a red and white checked tablecloth and got all the way up to a steaming gravy boat before dropping the plan.

Nope. No news about the novel.

Last night we had our first LA NaNoWriMo “meet and greet” where I was met and did some greeting. More people showed up than I expected, more than in years past, and all of them were eager and excited. I enjoyed seeing a few familiar faces and hope to see more. It was unclear if anyone enjoyed seeing me, either again or for the first time.

While talking about my upcoming noveling intentions I mentioned I’d like to have a character who was famous. Not a celebrity, and not someone who’s done anything to deserve it, something akin to a Baby Jessica who got her fifteen minutes for falling down a well. I’m intrigued by this, how some events and people somehow click into everyone’s consciousness while tons of other similar events get no mention at all.

Anyway, I think it would be cool to have a char who was famous for something years ago, someone people might remember but maybe not why or for what. I’m stumped, though, about why or how this person would be famous. An incredibly good suggestion was given about someone born with no elbows and that has me thinking, but that would be a constant source of amazement.

I spent most of last night thinking of life without elbows. Could you even get dressed?

I’m beginning to experience a strange mix of dread and excitement. I’m anxious to get started writing again, but I’m in the worst position I’ve ever been in as far as preparation goes. I’m far behind where I think I should be as far as ideas go. I’m wondering, seriously, about my past works, and am wondering if they’re as unfocused as I think. I can now describe them in twenty-five words, but I’m not sure at all if what I describe is actually on the page.

I wonder if I lack the sharpness needed to write a good novel. Do they really have a theme, a single idea, any of the things that a good novel should have? I can write a yarn, whatever that is, and maybe that’s all I should strive for.

I know, I know. Most newcomers coming to my blog complain because there aren’t any flashy pictures.

Here’s one for today:

The rains have left and I enjoyed bright blue skies and definite sweater weather. One would think that this day was tailor-made (as opposed to, say, the work of a tuba player) for bike riding. It was. I didn’t. I could have, but got caught up around the house putting off bike riding.

I’m inching away from the proposed story line mentioned in the Big Train Show website. It may be a spoiler, nonetheless, so you may want to avoid the entry for the twentieth in case I resort to that lame idea. What’s frightening me is I’m considering having Sid and Dina get together, and that can’t be good. I want him to be attracted to her, fascinated by her way of life, but at the same time repulsed and frightened by her lack of planning and spontaniety.

Owen, naturally, will try to be all over her.

It should be obvious that I lack expertise in personal relationships, so I wonder why the hell I think I can write about them? I’d be better served writing a novel about the Unabomber and the troubles he has doing his laundry.

It rained here for the last couple days and pretty much soaked the ground, which is what a rain should do. The local news sent people out to take pictures of water, in one case even showing the damage done by the “storm.” A small wall of uncemented or secured cinder blocks had a gaping hole!

When I was young we had “rain.” Now it’s always “storms.” I think this is weakening the whole notion of a storm, but they never asked me.

My upcoming story continues to scare me. I’ve decided I need to talk some with the Gods of Literature and demand something be done about POV. I don’t think it’s fair that I should have to choose one. If I use first or third person limited, I love the intimacy, but then that damn character has to be everywhere and see every thing I want to talk about. If I use omniscient (and I’ve never done that well), it’s too bland. I don’t want to write the prose equivalent of a screenplay, something that objective doesn’t excite me at all.

And, my main character isn’t happy and funny. I want to write happy and funny, or at least cynical and dry. I hope I can carry it off, and wonder if that’s why my earlier stuff isn’t as good as it could be. I think what will emerge in November will probably be fine, but right now I’m concerned.