Tuesday, September 19
An idea with promise?
This workplace comedy idea has legs. I went to sleep thinking about it, and woke up thinking about it, and made more notes sitting in the Element outside the mothership this morning after dropping the kid at school (just one; the other stayed home with a fever flu). This idea might just turn into something with promise, at least I think so now, so early in the thinking and pondering and note-taking process.
Here's what I'm thinking: I picture an eccentric, reclusive, mysterious dot-com billionaire owner who disappeared before the crash and now has come back and started a company. He reaches out and hires a one-hit-wonder '80s novelist who's now floundering and failing to repeat his once-upon-a-time success to undertake some sort of (not-yet-defined) secret(?) mission inside the walls of the billionaire's new financial or business services company, which isn't at all what it appears on the surface and which might just turn out to be some sort of hugely ridiculous practical joke or performance art piece or maybe a sinister money-laundering front involving thousands of people. I don't know yet, obviously, and even if I did I might not leak the ending so early in the process.
So this newly hired writer -- who maybe sees this assignment as a way to get his mojo back, or at least the seed to access back into the real world which fueled his one success -- is befriended by a small circle of cynical co-workers who at first distrust him as some sort of spy (which they don't really believe but which, of course, is true), and then like and trust him and decide to use him do their bidding, something (very undefined here and not even considered yet) maybe even ominous or suspect or maybe criminal after they find out he has had contact with the actual eccentric billionaire, who until now has only been rumored to be involved with the company. Or I don't know. We'll see. I sense there's big, deep layers of both sinister motives and cynicism at work here, but also a whole host of funny, sympathetic, innocent co-worker types who amusingly and cluelessly go happily about their everyday lives on the edge of Utopia, Colorado.
See? I'm pretty jazzed about this idea. I'll let it simmer some more and report back.
While it does its slow cook, on the back burner of my brain for the next few weeks, let me tell you that one of those first notes pages lists some inspirations, those things I've been thinking about over the past six months, things I like or that I'd like to aim for with this story that might on deep background influence where this story might go: the greats Vonnegut and Pynchon top the list (both had semi-brief stints working for very large companies, if I remember their bios correctly, and then obviously Dilbert and The Office (both BBC and NBC versions) which I enjoy too much probably, and then Max Berry's and Douglas Coupland's workplace books and Nick Hornby's people and, from reading all summer, Christopher Moore's over-the-top/off-the-wall humor. The word 'unhinged' has been in my mind for weeks because of Moore; as in, I need to make my writing more unhinged and purposeweird wierd. And finally, of course, are my nearly 18 years of corporate America cubicle dwelling and all the many things I've seen and heard and endured and the people I've come in contact with, including recent brushes that just fuel some of my already healthy workplace paranoia.
Write what you know, y'know?
Here's what I'm thinking: I picture an eccentric, reclusive, mysterious dot-com billionaire owner who disappeared before the crash and now has come back and started a company. He reaches out and hires a one-hit-wonder '80s novelist who's now floundering and failing to repeat his once-upon-a-time success to undertake some sort of (not-yet-defined) secret(?) mission inside the walls of the billionaire's new financial or business services company, which isn't at all what it appears on the surface and which might just turn out to be some sort of hugely ridiculous practical joke or performance art piece or maybe a sinister money-laundering front involving thousands of people. I don't know yet, obviously, and even if I did I might not leak the ending so early in the process.
So this newly hired writer -- who maybe sees this assignment as a way to get his mojo back, or at least the seed to access back into the real world which fueled his one success -- is befriended by a small circle of cynical co-workers who at first distrust him as some sort of spy (which they don't really believe but which, of course, is true), and then like and trust him and decide to use him do their bidding, something (very undefined here and not even considered yet) maybe even ominous or suspect or maybe criminal after they find out he has had contact with the actual eccentric billionaire, who until now has only been rumored to be involved with the company. Or I don't know. We'll see. I sense there's big, deep layers of both sinister motives and cynicism at work here, but also a whole host of funny, sympathetic, innocent co-worker types who amusingly and cluelessly go happily about their everyday lives on the edge of Utopia, Colorado.
See? I'm pretty jazzed about this idea. I'll let it simmer some more and report back.
While it does its slow cook, on the back burner of my brain for the next few weeks, let me tell you that one of those first notes pages lists some inspirations, those things I've been thinking about over the past six months, things I like or that I'd like to aim for with this story that might on deep background influence where this story might go: the greats Vonnegut and Pynchon top the list (both had semi-brief stints working for very large companies, if I remember their bios correctly, and then obviously Dilbert and The Office (both BBC and NBC versions) which I enjoy too much probably, and then Max Berry's and Douglas Coupland's workplace books and Nick Hornby's people and, from reading all summer, Christopher Moore's over-the-top/off-the-wall humor. The word 'unhinged' has been in my mind for weeks because of Moore; as in, I need to make my writing more unhinged and purposeweird wierd. And finally, of course, are my nearly 18 years of corporate America cubicle dwelling and all the many things I've seen and heard and endured and the people I've come in contact with, including recent brushes that just fuel some of my already healthy workplace paranoia.
Write what you know, y'know?
