Wednesday, September 6
Here we go again?
My brother wrote me last week saying he has an idea for starting this year's National Novel Writing Month, without telling me what it was (and expressing joy that he doesn't know where it'll end up, which is much of the fun of NaNoWriMo). I wrote back saying I'm going to have to be talked into doing it again this November. Granted, it probably won't take much to talk me into it. It's what I do.
Still, I've got so many drafts of unfinished novels laying around various computers and desks, I'm not sure I want to add to the collection by writing another first draft in November. Then again, maybe I can make the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most unpublished first drafts of novels. I'm at six -- or is it seven? -- and counting.
Hey, this will be fun: In order, my novels (and years written) are "Les Dempsey Falls in Love" (1984-5, 1990), "The Great South Dakota Novel" (1991-92), "Messiah's Sneaker" (1996-98 and 2001-02), "Balance" (2002-2003), "Left Field" (2003-2004), "The Edge of Nowhere" (2004-5) and "Les Dempsey Tries Again" (2005-6). I also hand wrote in a spiral notebook a novella-length story during my daily half-hour lunch break sitting in my old Mazda truck in '88 and '89. I have no idea where those 150 pages are now... But I recall it was a pretty good story....
Something is wrong with me. Seriously wrong.
Speaking of which, maybe it's related to this: I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's "How to Be Alone," a series of essays from the mid-late 1990s including his famous (infamous?) "Harper's essay" about the state of the American social novel. In it he quotes a Stanford researcher who's one of the few to actually study novel readers, and says we become one in two general ways (I'm super-simplifying here...) one, by seeing your parents as readers of novels, and/or two, as loner type nerd teens who escape into books. It's this latter group that often grow up to be novel writers.
She describes these loner/reader-writers in the second person to Franzen as, "You are a socially isolated individual who desperately wants to communicate with a substantive imaginary world." In the essay, he admits he takes this description personally, as if she was describing him personally. I do too.
I see a lot of myself in that quote. While I didn't grow up in a novel-reading household or as a childhood/teen-age loner/reader (I was always outside playing or inventing sports), I did grow up among readers, more or less: not my dad, who read the newspaper and the occasional magazine article, but my mom was an avid reader, mostly of non-fiction from the philosophical and alternative spiritual-religious book store sectors. My sister has a great bookshelf, and my brother is a writer-reader-librarian (as is my mother-in-law), and my wife is a voracious reader of 5-10 novels a month. I became a reader and a writer over time as I became more socially isolated and aware and self-conscious of my inability to talk semi-normally. For those who don't know me, I tend to talk softly and very fast and mumble/stumble over words and phrases, the result being I'm generally misheard or misunderstood, which naturally leads to a further reluctance to talk aloud, which in turn of course leads to further social isolation. Yes, it's the perfect skill-set for a public relations person working for a Fortune 25 company, which is exactly what I am in my 8-5 day job.
Still: I think I have something to say, and no way to say it. And so writing lets me say it, I suppose. And maybe that explains why I have seven nearly finished drafts of novels sitting around various drawers, closet floors and hard drives (not counting the lost spiral-bound scrawled story). And why I continue to post to this blog in a vacuum.
And yes, even why I'll probably start and finish the first draft of an eighth novel come November. Now, if only I had a few colorful characters and a situation to drop them into to see what happens to them over the ensuing 100,000 words.... Like I said: It's what I do.
Still, I've got so many drafts of unfinished novels laying around various computers and desks, I'm not sure I want to add to the collection by writing another first draft in November. Then again, maybe I can make the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most unpublished first drafts of novels. I'm at six -- or is it seven? -- and counting.
Hey, this will be fun: In order, my novels (and years written) are "Les Dempsey Falls in Love" (1984-5, 1990), "The Great South Dakota Novel" (1991-92), "Messiah's Sneaker" (1996-98 and 2001-02), "Balance" (2002-2003), "Left Field" (2003-2004), "The Edge of Nowhere" (2004-5) and "Les Dempsey Tries Again" (2005-6). I also hand wrote in a spiral notebook a novella-length story during my daily half-hour lunch break sitting in my old Mazda truck in '88 and '89. I have no idea where those 150 pages are now... But I recall it was a pretty good story....
Something is wrong with me. Seriously wrong.
Speaking of which, maybe it's related to this: I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's "How to Be Alone," a series of essays from the mid-late 1990s including his famous (infamous?) "Harper's essay" about the state of the American social novel. In it he quotes a Stanford researcher who's one of the few to actually study novel readers, and says we become one in two general ways (I'm super-simplifying here...) one, by seeing your parents as readers of novels, and/or two, as loner type nerd teens who escape into books. It's this latter group that often grow up to be novel writers.
She describes these loner/reader-writers in the second person to Franzen as, "You are a socially isolated individual who desperately wants to communicate with a substantive imaginary world." In the essay, he admits he takes this description personally, as if she was describing him personally. I do too.
I see a lot of myself in that quote. While I didn't grow up in a novel-reading household or as a childhood/teen-age loner/reader (I was always outside playing or inventing sports), I did grow up among readers, more or less: not my dad, who read the newspaper and the occasional magazine article, but my mom was an avid reader, mostly of non-fiction from the philosophical and alternative spiritual-religious book store sectors. My sister has a great bookshelf, and my brother is a writer-reader-librarian (as is my mother-in-law), and my wife is a voracious reader of 5-10 novels a month. I became a reader and a writer over time as I became more socially isolated and aware and self-conscious of my inability to talk semi-normally. For those who don't know me, I tend to talk softly and very fast and mumble/stumble over words and phrases, the result being I'm generally misheard or misunderstood, which naturally leads to a further reluctance to talk aloud, which in turn of course leads to further social isolation. Yes, it's the perfect skill-set for a public relations person working for a Fortune 25 company, which is exactly what I am in my 8-5 day job.
Still: I think I have something to say, and no way to say it. And so writing lets me say it, I suppose. And maybe that explains why I have seven nearly finished drafts of novels sitting around various drawers, closet floors and hard drives (not counting the lost spiral-bound scrawled story). And why I continue to post to this blog in a vacuum.
And yes, even why I'll probably start and finish the first draft of an eighth novel come November. Now, if only I had a few colorful characters and a situation to drop them into to see what happens to them over the ensuing 100,000 words.... Like I said: It's what I do.
