I'm thinking of writing a novel.

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Hashi
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by Hashi »

Im writing a novel now, and have been for many years. I am writing a science fiction novel, but have only taken the writing itself seriously this year. I have done ~164 pages now, and am currently editing it.

If I get stuck, I simply leave the place Im at, and work on something that I want to happen later, and simply leave "interlude" where I know I will come back to it some other time. Also, if I know I havent completely finished something but cannot write anymore, I will just put notes in that say what I want from that scene/chapter, and come back later.

Finally, I find it helps to listen to music while I do write.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by chris the cynic »

Ok, installment one. So far it is more or less as bad as expected. Also, with the possible exception of Jonas, none of you are any help.

Bad Novel (Working Title)

I told the talking cat I don't believe in talking cats. His response was, "And yet, here I am," which struck me as glib and unhelpful. I explained that the vocal cords of a cat simply couldn't produce English, I lectured on the structure of a cat's brain, I gave a PowerPoint presentation on the evolution of speech, I had MRI images and textbooks, and whatever else I could find. The cat was unimpressed. In truth, it wasn't the physical or logical impossibility of the talking cat that bothered me. It was that, while I wasn't sure what kind of story mine was, I was fairly sure it wasn't the kind of whacked out fantasy that included a talking cat. The cat countered that his existence was not in doubt.

So, when the werewolves showed up later I blamed the cat. The cat was unrepentant.

I sometimes ask myself why I put up with the cat even though I know the answer. He produces an income. I don't. I'm not sure how he earns money, I'm not sure I want to know. I imagine it involves telemarketing. The point is, anyone who thinks they wouldn't be able to put up with a talking cat has clearly never known the freedom of being financially secure without ever having to hold a job. And by freedom I mean mind numbing never ending boring listlessness that comes from having no purpose in life. Is it worth it? I don't know. It probably beats working. Also the apartment is nice.

As for the cat, he seems content most of the time. I call him Jonas. It's not his real name, but his real name cannot be produced by a human being. Actually, I'm not convinced what he said to me was his real name. I think he might have just cleared is throat and claimed it was his name. So I call him Jonas. On odd numbered days and official holidays I pronounce the J the way Americans are wont to do, as in, "Run like hell, Joseph McCarthy's come back from the dead." On even numbered days and days that should be holidays I pronounce it the way an ancient Roman would pronounce a consonantal I, as in, "Vestri vicis est iam." If he has annoyed me I call him yo-yo-ness.

Beyond the talking cat my life extends to a small group of friends. We usually meet at Starbucks. Given that I don't drink coffee it's a bit like being a vegan whose friends all get together at the International House of Meat and Eggs. I respect their lifestyle choices and try to ignore the smell. They are, in reverse alphabetical order, Nicolae, Lori, Jacob, and Isa,

Nicolae wants to open a bookstore, I think that sentence sums up who he is quite well.

Lori is into politics, she's actually the president of the local %@$& Lieberman (not literally) organization. I asked her once why the name was censored, she told me that "%@$&" got more attention than any four letter word ever could. She's a self identified socialist who, in addition to defeating Lieberman, hopes to destroy the republican party with Truth and Logic. Yes, she does capitalize both of those words. She also leaves republican party lowercase.

I met her at a protest against the Iraq war during the bush administration. Maybe thirty people showed up, and ten of them were in favor of the war. That convinced me that the world was going to go to hell and there simply weren't enough people who gave a damn to fix it, that convinced her that people needed to be jolted out of their somnambulant state and she's been trying to make people take notice of the world around them ever since. It hasn't really worked, but she seems to have an unending supply of determination which she uses to deal the fact that basically every single day represents yet another failure to make people give a damn.

Jacob I met while illegally exploring the tunnels of an old fort which I though dated back to the war of 1812 but instead turned out to have been set up after the Civil War. He said he was researching an MMO he planned to make someday, I was just there for the hell of it. I've heard him speak of the MMO about three times since then, every time he seems passionate about it and convinced he'll do it yet not once, not even a single time, has he actually created a game. The talking cat thinks he's crazy.

Most of his time is spent working, which makes me think he should get a talking cat of his own, unfortunately I don't know where one finds one and Jonas will not tell me. Actually, most of all of my friends' time is spent working, which I've always thought is a truly shameful reflection on the state of the world. If people had more time then good things could come to be. It is an important and little appreciated fact the mathematics on which our entire society is based were only worked out when the ancient Greeks found themselves faced with free time the didn't know what to do with.

Which brings us to Isa, who I met in math class. She is in her element whenever she has one of those pencils that can write on windows and a window. At some point she saw the movie A Beautiful Mind and has been trying to find a mathematical way to predict the movement of pigeons ever since. That's not the only project she's working on, mind you. She's also working on a way to convert music into an equation that is differentiable so that the world can at last listen to the second derivative to Beethoven's ninth. Or something like that. And something else that I thought was very interesting but seems to have slipped my mind.

How she will do these things while working inventory at a big box store is lost on me, but I have faith.

So, there we were, at a Starbucks. They were drinking, I was doing the Sudoku in a paper that someone else had abandoned there, all alone. Poor thing. Nicolae was trying to set up a future meeting in which we would do something somewhere. It sounded fine to me, but the other three pointed out that doing something somewhere was somewhat vague and, given that it was to do something somewhere at some point, somewhat hard to schedule for. Nicolae countered that if they would just say when they were available and what they wanted to do the something, somewhere and some point could all be replaced with more definite things.

That led to discussions of various people's work, which caused me to withdraw further from the conversation until Lori dragged me back into it, not quite kicking and screaming because I didn't want to make a scene, by trying to get everyone, starting with me, involved in some kind of protest fundraiser thing she was putting on.

One of the many problems with being financially secure and not needing to work is that it becomes very difficult to get out of something by being busy. If I were working 12 hours a day I would likely never need to go to a place, hold signs, look around at how few people showed up, feel my faith in humanity crushed yet again, and accomplish nothing. I could instead stay elsewhere and be a prime example of the humanity I have no faith in. I was not, and so I had no choice but to admit that not only did I have the time free, but I also would really rather see her target senator replaced with someone who had a fully functional soul.

When it came out that no one was busy at the time and place she was holding this rally thing, which itself must be viewed as a miracle of the second order, we all found ourselves drafted. Nicolae suggested that we do something somewhere after the money making protesty thing.

-

And so it was that on that, which I am going to call the 5th of Octember for reasons that I never plan to make clear, we decided to go out from a protest on, lets say the 7th of Antioch, in search of something somewhere to do. I'd say it was a fateful decision, but that really doesn't sound quite right.

So the protest fundraiser thing, we went to a place, held signs with less than witty slogans on them and met up with about ten other people. A surprising number of them had names starting in J. In addition to the Jacob we brought with us there was a Jake, a Jim, a Jack, and a Jenny. Needless to say, I was happy I didn't take the cat. I'm not entirely sure how it was supposed to create an income for the group, talked to people with a clipboard and and took change from people, but I think that really she just claimed it would make money to make us believe our time wasn't a total waste, certainly she never told us how much she made.

When the thingy ended our hands were cold and our bellies were empty, we said goodbye to the ten other people and got into Nicolae's car. Isa called shotgun, I snagged the driver's side back seat, Jacob got stuck in the middle and Lori on the other side of him. The radio was out, and none of us could sing. Lori ran a hangman game. The answer was something about Star Trek. It was finally decided that we'd have ice cream on the rocks. By which I mean be on the rocks, and have ice cream. Not have ice cream on ice, that doesn't make sense.

The tide was going out so the waves were fairly small, the sky was fairly impressive, broken clouds turned orange and yellow by the setting sun. We sat and watched the sunset in silence, eating our ice cream, until Isa saw something. At first we thought it was a sailboat, much to close to shore for safety, but as it drifted towards us we saw that it was … it was, well there's no non-absurd way to say this, it was a bathtub. The mast was attached through the drain. The sail appeared to be a shower curtain. It hit the rocks at an outcrop about a hundred feet left of us.

I got up and went down to get a closer look, the others did too. It appeared for all the world to be a normal bathtub. Somewhat cheap perhaps. Probably fiberglass. The mast looked like it was a likewise cheap shower curtain rod, and the sail was the shower curtain it had looked like. There was no indication whose tub it was, how it got there, or how it had managed to remain upright. It simply stayed there, knocking up against the rocks, bobbing back a bit, and the knocking against the rock again. No one had anything to say about it. Everyone took turns looking at it closely, touching it, and then stepping aside to let someone else get a look. Then we walked away one by one.

I was the last to walk away, as I did something caught my eye. Not in the tub, but in a nearby tide pool. At first I thought it was sea glass, but on closer examination it appeared to be amber, or something like it. I liked the way it looked so I grabbed it and put it in my pocket. And instantly wished I had dried it off first.

I headed back to the car with my newly acquired amber and my wet leg, leaving the bathtub boat behind. My hand nearly froze off as well. Let it be known that seawater on a cold day is, in fact, quite cold.

When I got back to the apartment I told the cat what had transpired. He yawned. I don't know what cat curiosity killed, but it wasn't Jonas. In fact, if Jonas is any indication curiosity may very well have killed that cat before it was able to breed and pass its curiosity on to younger generations. Instead of showing any interest in a bathtub that had been turned into a sailboat Jonas decided to lick his right hind leg.

I checked that Jonas had food, put the amber with a pile of other pretty rocks, turned on the TV, checked nearly one thousand channels, discovered that, yet again, nothing was on any of them, and went to sleep.

-

That night I had a dream about something that was somehow related to James Cameron movies and video games. I wouldn't bring it up at all, except that while xenomorphs and time traveling robots battling the Illuminati for control of Forum City I got a mission, from a wolf, that involved werewolves and the piece of amber I grabbed from the tide pool. Looking back knowing what I know about werewolves it seems like such dream might have some significance.

Some of the details are a bit hazy, but it went like this. I had just gotten off the red line at a new stop added between Harvard and Central stations. The station was immaculate, cleanest public transit station, imagined or real, that I've ever seen. The tiles were polished so well the glare off them hurt my eyes. But I couldn't stop and gawk. No, I was on a mission from a talking ostrich, I'm not sure whether that seemed normal because it was a dream or because living with Jonas has taken all of the excitement out talking animals. I had to get somewhere fast otherwise the world would end and we'd all be stuck using cellphone text messages to communicate in a bleak afterlife.

I hurried out of the station into a tropical rainforest, and rushed two blocks down into the deserted hell scape of of a post apocalyptic city. There was graffiti on the walls that said, "It's better now," over and over in multiple languages. There was absolutely no sign of my destination. So I took out a sandwich and had a seat among the charred wreckage. The sandwich was good, it was lizard-bird with potato-dog and a generous helping lettuce and tomato.

"Can I have some?" I wasn't at all startled by the interruption, I offered half the sandwich to the wolf and he ate it up. "Thank you, if you can take some time off from working for the ostrich, I might have a job for you." He explained that in the time since we parted ways he'd set up a business solving problems for those with neither money nor power. It hadn't worked out very well, "In spite of what television would have you believe, it doesn't pay very well. So I'm looking for someone who can do this on a shoestring budget. That's why I'm here, you're mister shoestring." I negotiated him up to two shoestrings. He paid in advance, and explained the mission as I laced them into my shoes.

"A group of werewolves came to me with a problem," the problem is one of the hazy bits. I think it involved other werewolves, a government agency, an IP address, and somebody's pants. The mission I remember more clearly, "All you have to do is retrieve the ancient seeing stone, it's about this big," he indicated by putting his snout about a quarter inch from his paw, "and it looks like that stuff from Jurassic Park."

"Amber?"

"Yeah, that's it. But no bugs. It's in one of the backrooms of a local black magic shop. It's guarded by," the list of defenses was so long I'm amazed it fit into a single dream. It ended with, "and chickens in giant mechanical battle armor." Recounting it now I find it somewhat odd how many animals came up in the dream. "Get it by whatever means necessary. But if you piss off the owner don't let him know I know you." With that he left. Or rather disappeared.

When I stood up the city had changed, no longer a hell scape it was now more a utopian setting, with buildings like great glass spires stretching up into the sky. The streets were still deserted though. I walked to the shop and bought the ancient seeing stone for a dollar thirty five. That seemed much easier than getting through security. It was, as I indicated earlier, the rock I'd found on the beach that day. As soon as I got it the wolf told me, "The key to the werewolves future is in your hands now, use it wisely. Use it well." That sounded a lot more profound in the dream.

Then ostrich called me and told me to hurry up and get on with saving the world. So I did. Though as I recall the world was saved by protozoa, not by me, in the end.


Waking up I found a much more boring world. I got up, brushed my teeth, ate a couple of bananas, and realized I had one and a half hours to kill before anything good would come on TV. It is truly amazing how slowly time passes when you have nothing but yourself and talking cat to fill it with. Especially if the talking cat isn't talking. It the talking cat curls up on the dryer and goes to sleep then you've got only yourself, and if only yourself wasn't boring as all hell then the entertainment industry wouldn't exist.

When the good thing on TV turned out to be a rerun I went for a walk. It was cold, autumn came late, but it came with a vengeance. My breath led the way and I learned there was ice when my feet shot out from under me and the ground came up and hit me in the back. As I lay there, looking up at the gray sky of winter I contemplated the universe. And life. And employment. I considered the possibility that maybe if I had a job free time would seem like something important and worthwhile. Then I considered that if I had a job I would have to work.

Then I considered that people were walking by me and not one asked, "Are you ok?" What the fuck people? I picked myself up off the ground, fell down again, this time hitting my head, still no concern from passers by, and walked what I was pretty sure was westward. I was hoping to find something interesting. In retrospect this would have been an opportune moment for the werewolves to show up. They did not. After the boredom reached a certain critical mass I started thinking of random things. I think the blow to my head might have had some impact as well. The piece of amber featured prominently.

In the end the idea I came up with seemed good, but how do you convince a health insurance executive to fund alchemy. It was while I pondered this that seven black cars with license plates I didn't recognize nearly ran me over. No one respects walk signals anymore. They made me miss my opening and I was stuck waiting for the lights to change. While I was there three other people showed up and waited alongside me. Only one of them mattered. She had auburn hair and a heavy black coat. She was wearing sunglasses. She told me, "You're bleeding," which I thought I would have noticed, but then she pointed towards the back of my head. I reached to touch there, and flinched because it hurt like hell. It was wet.

When I looked at my fingers I saw blood. It was an absurdly bright red which made me think that I really should look up what the color of blood means. I still haven't done that. Anyway, I looked back to her and said, "Yup, I'm bleeding."

-
--
-

I think I can safely say that with the exception of "I told the talking cat I don't believe in talking cats," and the talking cat being unrepentant about the werewolves none of the above went how I wanted it to go. The protest, for example, was originally supposed to serve a purpose, but I never came up with one and thus it didn't and died off quickly.

The first line and the logic of "If talking cat then werewolves," were what convinced me to include the talking cat. Given that the main character is built around his relationship to the talking cat, and Jonas provided the name for the talking cat, I'd say Jonas helped a lot.

The rest of you were no help whatsoever. But I already said that. I tried googling "stock characters" for inspiration, that is how low I have sunk on this, the first day of novel making. I've got six of the least developed characters in existence, and one of them is a cat. And no plot. And "I see your blood" lady just showed up. And werewolves waiting in the wings.

Also, writing a screwy dream is surprisingly difficult. Probably shouldn't have done it in the first place.

And the stunning lack of detail? I noticed it, I know it sucks.

[Edited to correct minor formatting thing.]
Last edited by chris the cynic on Sat Dec 19, 2009 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bobby 55
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by bobby 55 »

If that's what you can come up with my being no help then I'll be happy to be of no help in the future. I'm not a literary critic but that held my interest and as far as I'm concerned, didn't
suck. Well done.

P.S. I'm now off to b-b-q and drinks, I don't expect there's a book in that either. No talking cats, just talking bullshit. lol.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by Jonas »

I really love werewolves. I'm not sure that's relevant, but it's a fact.

It's... maybe a bit too dadaist for me. I was with you up to the dream, but then it went a bit nuts. I'm willing to give it a chance, but only because it's you.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by Kee715 »

I realize this was done quickly but, it is a bit hard to stay focused. It is in disarray & does not hold a topic for more than 10 seconds (I read quickly), making it hard for me to even focus on reading it. Now, my advice, whilst most likely utter crap and may ruin your novel if taken, is to add pointless filler in between each new subject/topic/section, then make the filler interesting. A lot of detail makes a good story. ^_^

Of course I will read it no matter how crappy it is, unless I find something better to do. (Which I, most likely, will not. V_V)
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by chris the cynic »

Jonas wrote:I really love werewolves. I'm not sure that's relevant, but it's a fact.
Tell me what it is about them that you love and it might be.
It's... maybe a bit too dadaist for me. I was with you up to the dream, but then it went a bit nuts. I'm willing to give it a chance, but only because it's you.
New word for me. It doesn't reject logic and reason intentionally, it does it because there is no plot. You'd be surprised how much having nothing happen can cause irrational things to happen, the dream can safely be ignored, and will likely be removed or significantly revised should ever a second draft arrive.

-

Bobby, if you want to be of assistance, it would be useful to say what you liked.

-
[Added:]

Seems worth pointing out that I considered Bobby's response the unexpected one. I told you all I expected it to be bad. Having written 3361 words I agree that those words represent bad writing. The plan does not involve revision until the thing is done though, so tomorrow expect more bad writing.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by bobby 55 »

I never said I wanted to be of assistance, I only offered a suggestion earlier when asked for one. If I read anything it must be interesting for me to continue reading, as was your story. Don't expect me to critique style or content, because frankly, if the story holds my interest, then none of that matters to me.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by Jaedar »

I found the writing to be quite entertaining when it was dealing with the talking cat.
Then I sort of trailed off and got bored.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by gamer0004 »

chris the cynic wrote:
Jonas wrote:I really love werewolves. I'm not sure that's relevant, but it's a fact.
Tell me what it is about them that you love and it might be.
It's... maybe a bit too dadaist for me. I was with you up to the dream, but then it went a bit nuts. I'm willing to give it a chance, but only because it's you.
New word for me. It doesn't reject logic and reason intentionally, it does it because there is no plot. You'd be surprised how much having nothing happen can cause irrational things to happen, the dream can safely be ignored, and will likely be removed or significantly revised should ever a second draft arrive.

-

Bobby, if you want to be of assistance, it would be useful to say what you liked.

-
[Added:]

Seems worth pointing out that I considered Bobby's response the unexpected one. I told you all I expected it to be bad. Having written 3361 words I agree that those words represent bad writing. The plan does not involve revision until the thing is done though, so tomorrow expect more bad writing.
In other words it's modernistic.

EDIT: I read the first half, which is a tremendous accomplishment on your behalf since I do not like reading long texts on teh interwebz. I really liked it, though some parts can be improved.
Last edited by gamer0004 on Sat Dec 19, 2009 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by loony636 »

I read the first section and stopped, not because it was by any means bad (I actually thought the first section was hilarious), but because fatigue is setting in and I think speedy responses to threads are a virtue (though hopefully it doesn't fall into the "uninformed and intellectually useless" category). Your writing style is, for want of a better word, a little stunted and leaves your writing a little underdeveloped. What most writers excel at is immersion; Tolkien, Christie, Dickens, etc, all draw you in in such a way that you can't help but actually feel like you exist in Narnia/Middle Earth/Your mother's house/etc, and are personally experiencing all of the events in the novel as they dramatically unfold before you. While its easy to say (but much harder to replicate in any sane or cogent fashion), you need to work on the immersion of your writing, and it stems, not from the subject matter, the idea, the characters or the dialogue, but from your narrative and how you convey the story to the reader. In other words, its a fundamental change to your writing style that will elevate your story from enjoyable fan-fiction to marketable novel quality writing.

In terms of how you actually make such a transition? I'd say firstly; experience: Just write and get feedback, like what you're doing now. Secondly; read: See how others do it. Read Lord of the Rings or one of Agatha Christie's books and try (without plagiarising it) to emulate it.

I must say I speak from an almost novice writer's perspective, but I do like the way that your story's going and your writing is enjoyable, and has an extraordinary amount of potential. Albeit slightly too many in-jokes for anyone in the outside/real world to understand :P.

On a totally unrelated note, I think the hardest part of a novel is the first sentence/paragraph, and I think you just about nailed it.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by chris the cynic »

loony636 wrote: I must say I speak from an almost novice writer's perspective, but I do like the way that your story's going and your writing is enjoyable, and has an extraordinary amount of potential.
That's because you stopped reading after the first bit, the quality, while I wouldn't say it goes down steadily, but it definitely goes in no other direction.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by Duke Floss »

I have been recently starting to write again - I find it is much easier to tackle things in vignettes as opposed to just trying to write a novel. I have about 4 or 5 main ideas right now and I am developing them separately. After I have finished the bulk of these ideas I will utilize methods such as the cut up & fold in techniques used by Burroughs to relate some of the characters and events together. After which I will finish writing the segues and editing for sense.

What I have found helpful is writing what I know and not what I'd like to think I knew. For this I have taken down direct accounts of experiences I have had and then started to pull them apart and change the scenario to make it slightly more surreal or interesting. For character observations I have taken to observing people I know and random strangers I meet or don't and think how I could/would write what I am seeing.
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by chris the cynic »

gamer0004 wrote: In other words it's modernistic.
It's like this:

I haven't been able to write for years. One way to deal with writer's block is to write through it, the problem is that doing that usually results in utter shit. For example, multiple times in what you saw above were places where I could have set up the groundwork for a plot the problem is that, as of yet, I have no plot to lay the groundwork for, so I'd come to a spot where I could do that, and immediately smash into the concrete wall with a brick facade that is having nothing to write.

So you'll see what Kee715 describes as not holding a topic for more than 10 seconds because I'll write into a spot that would be useful if I knew what was going to happen, but then be forced to say, "Shit! I have nothing to say here," back the fuck off, and try to go in a different direction.

This is not discouraging because it is resulting in less than perfect writing, it is discouraging because in theory it shouldn't be happening until next week. The write a novel in a month thing has worked for thousands of people, but apparently the way it worked was usually a week of words flowing freely which, while not good, would lay a foundation potentially good stuff to come, then stalling out in week two, at that point facing abysmal despair and hopelessness. Then write through that, and come out with a novel. The "writing through that" bit is, I gather, supposed to depend on the foundation laid out in week one.

Of course most people probably don't have writer's block going in, which may make this entire project a lost cause since, as I said, the reason that writing a novel in a month can work apparently depends on getting a broad, but not necessarily good or solid or deep, foundation before you start slamming into walls. That way you have a lot you can build off of and ideas can bounce off each other in your mind.

One of the things I did that probably isn't helping is deciding to tell the story in first person. One way to get a broader base on which to build is to jump around. If I had people in three different cities then at least I would know that somehow somewhere somewhen they'd need to come together, and figuring out why would at least be a possible source of inspiration or direction.

-

Which is why it would help to know what anyone who sees likable things in this likes, that would at least say maybe I should do something more like [whatever]. Ok, so maybe it wouldn't help, but I like to think that it would help.

-

Short version: it isn't intentionally anything. Modernistic, dadaist, whatever. It is, "I'm having trouble writing and this is what came out."
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Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by chris the cynic »

I give you more words. More words in which I continue to lack detail and nothing continues to happen.

Bad Novel, Day two:


"You should have someone take a look at it," she said. Her name, incidentally, was Amy.

"I'm not insured." This was true. It was also one of the reasons I let Lori talk me into doing politics related things. I mean I think it would be great if I could afford to walk into a hospital and say, 'I just got hit in the back of the head by a 6.5 sextillion ton planet, could you have a look and see if everything is all right,' but my country doesn't work that way. Far from it. The light changed and I started walking across the street.

"I could take a look."

"There's no need," and I meant it. If I were feeling woozy, or confused, or having trouble balancing I might agree something needed to be done, but none of that was happening. I hit my head, it was bleeding, these things happen.

"I insist." And she wasn't kidding. This random person who I'd never met before did insist, repeatedly, all the way back to my apartment that she be allowed a closer look a the wound and check my vital signs. Which seemed self evidently vital to me. She did at least have the courtesy to introduce herself along the way.

I'm not sure exactly sure why I relented, maybe the head injury had had an impact on my cognitive function after all. For whatever reason I decided to let her take a look. Which involved inviting her into my apartment.

She actually started while we were going up the stairs. Did you know that looking at your watch to find out what day of the week it is is considered cheating? Apparently it doesn't help the questioner learn anything useful about your mental state. Who knew?

When we entered the apartment I took off my coat and threw it on a chair, Amy left her's on, along with her sunglasses. Actually that made some sense, the windows let in enough light that we might as well be outside.

She looked around, but there really wasn't much to see. It's a large apartment with not much in it. The main room was a kitchen and living room, differentiated by the style of flooring. From the the entertainment system against one wall to the kitchen counters on the opposing wall was a vast empty space broken by only three objects. A nice green couch where the outer two thirds of it recline and the middle third folds down into a drink holder which was in pristine condition except for a mustard stain on the left armrest, a matching recliner that a certain cat had used as a scratching post about twenty thousand times too many, and the kitchen table. I frequently told that cat that we could comfortably fit all the same stuff in a place half as large, probably smaller, but he wouldn't hear of it.

I was pretty sure that if I could just get the cat to settle for a smaller apartment we'd save enough money for me to get health insurance. Not good health insurance, mind you, but good enough that I wouldn't tempted to invite in strange people who wore coats and sunglasses indoors and offered to take a look at my head. On the other hand, if I really cared that much about health insurance I'd get a job.

Jonas walked into the room, took a look at me, took a look at Amy, asked, "What did you do to yourself, and why did you bring home a stray?" and walked away before I could answer. That's more or less normal for Jonas.

After a moment Amy asked, "The cat can talk?"

"Of course the cat can talk. It's a talking cat, talking is what they do."

Amy shrugged and asked for a flashlight. This meant searching for a flashlight and in so doing showing off for my new guest exactly how disorganized I was. After exhausting the usual places (the coat rack, the superglue drawer, the cabinet where glasses are stored and so forth) I found about three quarters of a red LED light next to the bottom microwave. All of the most of the important parts were present, and the batteries were charged.

Actually as flashlights go I'd say that it was pretty complete, it didn't have a switch, or anything holding the batteries in for that matter, but if you held the batteries in and pushed gently on a piece of metal it worked like a charm.

I showed Amy how to use it and she immediately shined it in my eyes. I don't know what the point of that was, but she assured me, "That's good." and then looked at the wound itself. "So, why do you have two microwaves?"

Just as she asked that she did something supremely painful to the back of my head. When that moment had passed I tried to answer, "The bottom one is bigger and the," and had to stop as she did something else painful, "one on top has a spinny thing."

"A spinny thing?" She put the flashlight down.

"Someone won it free at a sweepstakes; it was a gift."

"Makes sense," I'm fairly sure it didn't, but who am I to judge. "Let me see your wrist." I offered my right wrist, she damned her thumb into it while looking at her watch. I'm guessing she was checking my pulse. She delivered her conclusion, "You should be fine," which would have probably been more meaningful if I hadn't come to that same conclusion before I even met her. Admittedly I hadn't figured out I was bleeding at that point, but the discovery of blood had simply changed my status from 'fine' to 'fine, but bleeding.'

Amy wasn't quite finished though. "You really should wash it out though, there's a lot of gunk in there." I believe that gunk is a technical term for dirt, sand, and other things you'd find on a sidewalk in late autumn. She convinced me to let her wash it out. Her argument was sound, I can't see the back of my own head, and thus couldn't tell when it was done. That hurt like hell too. I'm still not sure what horrible downside there would be to ending up some sand embedded in my head. I've never heard anyone say, "He would have survived if it weren't for the sand in his head."

So anyway, Amy and I traded contact info for no reason whatsoever and she left apparently content that she had subjected me to unnecessary testing to tell me something I already knew and removed gunk from my wound. I wondered if it was possible I'd found someone more bored than I was.


I didn't wonder about it for long, mind you, there were more important things to think about, like how easy it would be to put a pool table in the apartment. It would make the empty space seem a lot less empty, and also justify it to a degree since a pool table requires empty space on all sides. The problem I was having was coming up with a way to convince a cat to buy a pool table.

I eventually gave up, put on a DVD, plopped down on the recliner. After a while Jonas came by and curled up on my lap, "She was a strange one."

I pet him and said, "Yes indeed."

"So, what happened to your head?"

"Someone hit me with the Earth."

"You mean you still haven't figured out how to land on your feet."

I stopped petting him. Many possible responses went through my head. None bear repeating. Most were along the lines of, 'Opened any doors lately?' which would have convinced the cat of his mental superiority. So instead of a snappy comeback I simply ignored him. At first he did nothing, then he pushed on my hand in the way that cats do, when that didn't work he tried to sharpen his claws on me. That got him dumped on the floor.

Twenty minutes later he came back, I pet him, he purred, all was as it should be.



A while later Jacob and Isa invited me to over to talk about the MMO. This was problematic because Lori and Nicolae were the only ones with cars. Well Lori's is a jeep but that is neither here nor there. The point is that it meant walking. It's probably a sign of how truly low my standards are that I was proud of myself for not falling down.

On the walk over it started snowing what I call snow globe snow for reasons that anyone with an imagination should be able to figure out. It's light, gentle and above all dry. A lot of people assume walking in snow is cold, they're wrong. Snow isn't any colder than a lack of snow. Precipitation only makes you colder if it's wet. As such, snow globe snow isn't bad to be walking in.

It's actually kind of nice. Especially the way streetlights tend to catch it. It was a nice walk over. The snow was starting to collect on the branches of leafless trees, the result was a very nice contrast; white on top, dark bark on bottom. It made it so you could distinguish every branch. I like the way it looks, but it never lasts. A stiff breeze will blow it all off and even when there is no wind sunlight tends to kill it. You've got to be there when the snow is falling, or soon after, if you want to see that kind of thing.

Isa and Jacob shared half a duplex with someone I've never actually met. His name is Bob, or Rob, or something like that. I'm not sure whether he's never around, or they never invite me over when he is. If it's the first they certainly get their money's worth out of him. I offered to share my apartment with them, they didn't take me up like that. I still sort of helped them though, I was the one who introduced them to each other after all.

Anyway, their place had a much better space to stuff ratio than my own. Cozy-crowded. And a mess, but mostly cozy. Couch and chairs pulled in close to a glass coffee table and a couple storm door windows laid around for Isa to work out equations on. The floor was covered with a bizarre combination of game books, textbooks and printouts that you'd only expect from crazy people trying to make a game. If you don't see the connection between a history of da Vinci's works, a d20 pen and paper role playing supplement, and four years worth of a video game development blog printed and bound ... either you're not crazy or you're not making that kind of game.

The meeting was an exercise in world building. The concept of the MMO had expanded since then, and moved somewhat sideways as well. When last I had heard it there were several different ideas that Jacob was working on, with the plan of eventually choosing the best. Now the plan was to do it all. Have the game world divided into cities each of them be built around one of the things with the borderlands between them a mixing ground where you can fight Eldritch Abominations with rail guns and finally find out whether wizardry is better than nano augmentation.

Which is to say that the game was becoming more and more of a pipe dream. Something simple was unlikely to ever work out. Making any game with only two part time employees is insane, especially if one of them is more interested in an algorithm for pigeon movement. Though if the game is ever made it may insure that the game will have the most realistic pigeon movement in the entire history of videogames. Making a game that essentially amounts to several games with only two employees one of whom has the aforementioned problem is more nuts. Expecting you'll have enough players in this game that will likely never be made to form several different communities such that they'll create guilds and alliances and corpocracies so that the the players will drive the world's story by creating their own overarching plot: Madness.

But very fun madness to brainstorm. And Isa didn't care about the game anyway, she cared about her equations. Being a wizard didn't interest her, creating an equation that would govern the ambient magic based on the number of wizards in their area, their power levels, and their configuration on the other hand was something akin to her version of chocolate.

For me its about how things go together. If you've got a dragon on the one hand, and lightweight ballistic armor on the other, does that mean you can have flying dragon tanks? How many nanites does it take to make a limited area gray goo weapon and can they be fitted into a longbow arrow? If a society's economy is based on gold, and you have working alchemy, what is the best way to make use of your limitless supply of gold? Must you think of inflation? If you want to intentionally devalue gold by flood the market with it in an effort to bring their economy to it's knees what can they do to protect themselves?

All these things and more were discussed as we poured over the disparate texts, drinking soda and while a science fiction movies from the 1940s played. In the end, which was sometime around 3 AM, conversation died down, and I decided it was time to go home. I carefully made my way out, trying not to damage any of the books, put on my shoes, put on my coat, and let myself out.

The snow was a few inches deep, it was a lot colder, and only then did I realize I had no gloves. I pulled my hands into my coat sleeves, held the sleeves shut, and stepped out into the the cold. It still looked very nice, but that didn't matter as much when I was worried about keeping my fingers and toes. Where I had strolled over I trudged back.

One stretch of the journey takes me down a road that has houses on one side, and uncut woods on the other. It was the kind of thing you looked at and thought of Robert Frost. I didn't stop there, to watch those woods fill up with snow, I did, however, notice that something was alive in there. At first I thought it might be some kind of echo. Pretty soon I was convinced there was something in the woods that moved when I moved, and stopped when I stopped.

I tried speeding up, slowing down, turning around, it stayed beside me. I looked into the woods, couldn't see a damned thing. I was, eventually, able to see movement in the woods, but I couldn't tell what it was, and it was very cold, so I went on my way. Walking quickly.

It stopped following me when the road and the wood parted ways. The most annoying thing was that I had no idea what it was. Well, that and I'd lost feeling in some of my fingers. When I got home I spent a long and painful while thawing out my hands. When I finished that I found myself unable to sleep. The attempt just made me very, very bored.

I walked around the apartment looking for something interesting to do. After several false starts I focused my attention turned to the pile of pretty rocks. I looked passed a piece of speckled granite, passed milky quartz with a dark intrusion and an orange rock I had never identified, and settled on the piece of amber. For some reason it seemed important. It did not, however, make me less bored.

In the end I fell asleep on the couch while watching a documentary on communist jokes. The amber in my hand, the hand in my pocket.
bobby 55
Illuminati
Posts: 6354
Joined: Wed Jun 24, 2009 9:15 am
Location: Brisbane Australia

Re: I'm thinking of writing a novel.

Post by bobby 55 »

This time I found myself smiling through most of that. I can't come up with anything to describe that apart from charming. I'm sure there are others who will give you a more intellectual appraisal, alas not me.
Growing old is inevitable.......Growing up is optional
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