Thursday, November 2
Day 2
Just back from another two hours at the library, and some 3700+ more words, taking me to somewhere above 7,700 words, so I'm well ahead of pace. It seems to be writing itself so far, which is really fun as long as I can keep up because the words just flow. I have no idea what the main plot is, yet, but I have plenty of ideas for secondary plots and people, so right now I'm just kind of gettin gthe story started, the main characters introduced and setting up the premise for this whole exerise.
You want an excerpt? Sure you do. OK: here it comes, with this warning - this is very raw, cut/paste NaNo text right out of the working text file. I'm not going to try to proof, edit or fix anything, just offering my three dedicated Edge of Nowhere readers an inside glimpse at what comes out when you turn off your internal editor and strive to write lengthy, bad prose without context. Here goes:
An excerpt from Chapter One of TLA, by me, eba:
“OK,” Jeff said after a moment. “Fair enough. Give it your best shot.”
“Alright.” Jeff heard Steve clear his throat, and then take a sip of something. He listened hard, trying to decide if it was coffee or tea or soda or water, or something harder, gin and tonic maybe, or a whiskey, or maybe a martini. He had no idea, and knew he’d never be able to figure it out, but he tried anyway. “OK, so my name is Steve, and I own a moderately large business consulting company in Colorado, pushing 3,000 employees, we made $32 million profit on $700 million sales last year. And I would like to hire you, Jeff, to come work on some special projects for my company, and in return I’ll do a couple of things for you.
“First, what you’ll get: a steady five-day-a-week job, access to a condo very similar to the one you and Holly are currently living in, and at least $80,000 a year for two years. Plus, I’ll pay make your mortgage payments on your California home in advance. I’ll give you a $25,000 signing bonus, if you agree to the two-year contract, and another $75,000 if you make it through both years.”
“You said Colorado?”
“Yes sir, the headquarters are in a small growing city on the Front Range, about a half-hour north of Denver, in the fast growing exurban areas, a little place that might not show up on your travel maps, called Utopia.”
“Utopia? That sounds too good to be true. Like your offer.”
“I’m not done yet. Please don’t make any judgments yet.”
“OK,” Jeff said.
“OR decisions. Hear me out.”
“OK.”
“OK, so you’ll make decent money, with the opportunity for a raise the second year if you do good work, like all our employees do. You’ll be assigned to one of our special projects teams and, publicly, you’ll be researching and writing a variety of internal and external communications projects, news releases, internal publication stories for our intranet and, also publicly, perhaps a history of the company.”
“You want me to write for the house organ?”
“And probably the annual report, and the company history, as I said. We’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary in a couple of years, and I would like to give all our employees a nice coffee table book to celebrate our enterprise, our organization and mostly our people.”
“You know who I am, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you want me to write for a crappy company newsletter, no offense.”
“None taken. Yes. It’s a good job. There are hundreds of people, young journalists who would love to come work for me in that capacity. I also happen to know you haven’t done much of anything for a dozen years or more, Jeff. I know you like so sit around on your ratty brown couch taking showers ever three or four days when your girlfriend finally gets sick of you moping around, and I also know you’re a talented and proud writer. I believe in you, and I want to give you a change to get your mojo back.”
“My mojo? Did you really just use the word mojo?”
“Yes, but that’s beside the point. Listen, in addition to writing for the company intranet sites, I also want you to act a spy for me inside the walls.
“A spy?” Jeff laughed. “You want me to spy on your company from the inside?”
“Yes, sort of. Listen, I have a dozen or so people working for me already. I like to hire smart, creative people and let them loose inside the company to see what happens. Call it spying, call it an experiment, call it smart leadership, call it whatever you want, but no one can know we’ve talked, or that you’re working for me.”
“This is some sort of joke, right? Who’s this, really?”
“I need you to learn everything you can about the company from the inside. I need to know what people think, who has the good ideas, who’s full of it, who has the real power that’s not reflected on the org charts, who the natural leaders are, who the troublemakers are, and I need it all to be hush-hush. Undercover. On the sly.”
“Mike? Is this you? Did Mike put you up to this? It’s not funny.”
“I’m serious, Jeff. Listen, I loved your book. It changed my life, it really did. It opened my eyes, and instead of going down the path I was headed, it changed my life. I went to college instead. I studied computers and software, because of Blue and Seven in your book. I ended up in grad school at Stanford in ‘91. I never graduated. I now own -- outright -- a $700 million a year company. And now I want to do you a favor.”
“Writing for a company rag is not a favor.” Jeff reached for the remote and hit the mute. The play-by-play started popping up as white-on-black digital text, full of amusing little typos.
“No, I agree, it will be a little bit of grunt work, and little bit of hard work. But listen: I’m in a position to return the favor, and I want to return the favor, and I need to return the favor for reasons you won’t understand. It’s not just about writing press releases for a cutting edge business services company: I’ve giving you insider access to a global business, and all the smart and interesting and stubborn and political and working-for-a-living and assholes who work and run and live for such a company. Think of it this way: I’m turning you loose inside a place that will change your life, and it will open you eyes. I’m handing you two years of in-depth grad-school level business access that is very ripe. Very ripe. You will get some good habits back, by having to report to work every day, and you will get your eyes opened by the state of American business and our company’s unstated goals, and you will write one hell of a fucking good novel from this experience. You will work for me for two years, you will watch and listen and learn, you will get your mojo back and you will write the first great American novel of the 21st century.”
Jeff was sitting up now, leaning forward, thinking.
Thinking hard.
You want an excerpt? Sure you do. OK: here it comes, with this warning - this is very raw, cut/paste NaNo text right out of the working text file. I'm not going to try to proof, edit or fix anything, just offering my three dedicated Edge of Nowhere readers an inside glimpse at what comes out when you turn off your internal editor and strive to write lengthy, bad prose without context. Here goes:
An excerpt from Chapter One of TLA, by me, eba:
“OK,” Jeff said after a moment. “Fair enough. Give it your best shot.”
“Alright.” Jeff heard Steve clear his throat, and then take a sip of something. He listened hard, trying to decide if it was coffee or tea or soda or water, or something harder, gin and tonic maybe, or a whiskey, or maybe a martini. He had no idea, and knew he’d never be able to figure it out, but he tried anyway. “OK, so my name is Steve, and I own a moderately large business consulting company in Colorado, pushing 3,000 employees, we made $32 million profit on $700 million sales last year. And I would like to hire you, Jeff, to come work on some special projects for my company, and in return I’ll do a couple of things for you.
“First, what you’ll get: a steady five-day-a-week job, access to a condo very similar to the one you and Holly are currently living in, and at least $80,000 a year for two years. Plus, I’ll pay make your mortgage payments on your California home in advance. I’ll give you a $25,000 signing bonus, if you agree to the two-year contract, and another $75,000 if you make it through both years.”
“You said Colorado?”
“Yes sir, the headquarters are in a small growing city on the Front Range, about a half-hour north of Denver, in the fast growing exurban areas, a little place that might not show up on your travel maps, called Utopia.”
“Utopia? That sounds too good to be true. Like your offer.”
“I’m not done yet. Please don’t make any judgments yet.”
“OK,” Jeff said.
“OR decisions. Hear me out.”
“OK.”
“OK, so you’ll make decent money, with the opportunity for a raise the second year if you do good work, like all our employees do. You’ll be assigned to one of our special projects teams and, publicly, you’ll be researching and writing a variety of internal and external communications projects, news releases, internal publication stories for our intranet and, also publicly, perhaps a history of the company.”
“You want me to write for the house organ?”
“And probably the annual report, and the company history, as I said. We’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary in a couple of years, and I would like to give all our employees a nice coffee table book to celebrate our enterprise, our organization and mostly our people.”
“You know who I am, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you want me to write for a crappy company newsletter, no offense.”
“None taken. Yes. It’s a good job. There are hundreds of people, young journalists who would love to come work for me in that capacity. I also happen to know you haven’t done much of anything for a dozen years or more, Jeff. I know you like so sit around on your ratty brown couch taking showers ever three or four days when your girlfriend finally gets sick of you moping around, and I also know you’re a talented and proud writer. I believe in you, and I want to give you a change to get your mojo back.”
“My mojo? Did you really just use the word mojo?”
“Yes, but that’s beside the point. Listen, in addition to writing for the company intranet sites, I also want you to act a spy for me inside the walls.
“A spy?” Jeff laughed. “You want me to spy on your company from the inside?”
“Yes, sort of. Listen, I have a dozen or so people working for me already. I like to hire smart, creative people and let them loose inside the company to see what happens. Call it spying, call it an experiment, call it smart leadership, call it whatever you want, but no one can know we’ve talked, or that you’re working for me.”
“This is some sort of joke, right? Who’s this, really?”
“I need you to learn everything you can about the company from the inside. I need to know what people think, who has the good ideas, who’s full of it, who has the real power that’s not reflected on the org charts, who the natural leaders are, who the troublemakers are, and I need it all to be hush-hush. Undercover. On the sly.”
“Mike? Is this you? Did Mike put you up to this? It’s not funny.”
“I’m serious, Jeff. Listen, I loved your book. It changed my life, it really did. It opened my eyes, and instead of going down the path I was headed, it changed my life. I went to college instead. I studied computers and software, because of Blue and Seven in your book. I ended up in grad school at Stanford in ‘91. I never graduated. I now own -- outright -- a $700 million a year company. And now I want to do you a favor.”
“Writing for a company rag is not a favor.” Jeff reached for the remote and hit the mute. The play-by-play started popping up as white-on-black digital text, full of amusing little typos.
“No, I agree, it will be a little bit of grunt work, and little bit of hard work. But listen: I’m in a position to return the favor, and I want to return the favor, and I need to return the favor for reasons you won’t understand. It’s not just about writing press releases for a cutting edge business services company: I’ve giving you insider access to a global business, and all the smart and interesting and stubborn and political and working-for-a-living and assholes who work and run and live for such a company. Think of it this way: I’m turning you loose inside a place that will change your life, and it will open you eyes. I’m handing you two years of in-depth grad-school level business access that is very ripe. Very ripe. You will get some good habits back, by having to report to work every day, and you will get your eyes opened by the state of American business and our company’s unstated goals, and you will write one hell of a fucking good novel from this experience. You will work for me for two years, you will watch and listen and learn, you will get your mojo back and you will write the first great American novel of the 21st century.”
Jeff was sitting up now, leaning forward, thinking.
Thinking hard.
