Just like running a marathon, writing a novel takes discipline. I can speak from experience on both. I do both in a mediocre fashion. The question is, are you fit enough to do it? Can you write 1666 words per day to total 50,000 words?
I think I can do it!
I wrote my first bad novel this way. So I am going to do another!
I think I’m limber enough, verbose enough, and driven to drivel enough to do it again. So here I go. I will all self doubt and all thought to quality and editing out the door and just let it all hang out. So stay tuned for updates.
I am keeping in mind I can’t even type 600 words a day in this thing, but what the hey.
Just to get me pumped up I thought I might post my heroes, I did note as I was collecting the images that they are all men, a lot of them dead, and most of them white. So bring on the thwackem sticks you ladies of heck!!!
The textual onslaught starts on Nov 1!
*James Joyce*
White, Irish and dead. Famous for Ulysses, a great thematic work of one single day in Dublin through the eyes of a Jewish Ad Man and his alter ego Stephen Dedalus, there are some juicy bits sprinkled throughout that got him in trouble. His book of short stories, Dubliners usually gets read by more college students. I like it all, it’s basically a great ride.
*Gabriel Garrcia Marquez*
I named my son for this man. One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are two heavy duty hitters on any day. I love how his stuff puts you somewhere far away, and then starts putting all sorts of slightly off-kilter subjects that make it slightly more than fiction, and somewhere just below mythology.
*William Gibson*
I spend more time quoting this guy than just about anybody else. He hits all the keys on the piano in the right order almost everytime. He has progressively gotten better from Neuromancer on up. Some folks pine for the cyberpunk days, but I find myself really, really impressed with Pattern Recognition. Because I work in advertising now this is a must read for ad folks. Top quote for the week, more of Gibsonism really, LOMBARD, (loads of money but a real dickhead).
*Jose Saramago*
I never thought I’d find myself deeply indebted to a Portuguese communist atheist. But everything is more than the sum of it’s parts. I of course place no value judgement on his beliefs, but my middle class, upbringing certainly wouldn’t lend itself to his ideals. I think Blindness, The Stone Raft, and A History of the Siege of Lisbon are some of the finest books ever written. Blindness especially makes the list. No book since I’ve been an adult has wrenched my heart so badly as that book.
More dead white males later…