Yesterday I hit 98,000 words on the current novel. Which is about 13,000 words farther than I thought it would go, and I still have a handful of plot points that have to be included before we can hit the diminuendo and the "Good Night, Gracie!" And while it's easy to open it up and keep on going, I'm really wishing that it were finished already, because it's so easy to just open it up and keep on going.
I hate beginning, and I hate beginnings, and I hate wasting ink on the twenty thousand or so words of drain circling that it takes me to find the voice I'm looking for. And when I'm back at the beginning again, it's hard to remember that the beginning will ever be anything but shit. Which is why having something that's been almost done for a few months now is really dangerous: it's just easier to keep going with the really familiar, comfortable plot and characters than to do the research or write the opening of any of the things I'm actually supposed to be writing. Like the PhD novel that Henry thinks I'm already well into. Or the novel for Crime Fiction that Henry thinks I'm already well into. Or really, anything that can be slid in under the heading "things that my supervisor thinks that I'm working on."
The fact that it's 98,000 words without being done, by the way, is Exhibit A in the ongoing discussion of why I don't do NaNoWriMo. It's a discussion because everyone I know does it, and everyone I know that does it turns into a proselytizer when I say that I never have and probably won't. And the numbers are the 'why.'
On a day that I get absolutely nothing done, including putting on clothes, I draft 1,500 words. When I have something to avoid doing, can't sleep, or get really into it, it's more, but on the worst day it will be a solid 1,500; math it out, that's at least 45,000 a month. The goal of NaNoWriMo is a 50,000 word novel in 30 days; even when I was writing them out in Marble composition books, I haven't written a novel that ended in 50,000 words. I could double it up and maybe get out a complete novel in the alloted time, but I'd be pretty well cooked for the next few months, and nothing else would get done. Or I could call it finished at 50k and never mind that the story is only half done. But a novel is a novel and the goal of the exercise is to write a novel in a month while creating the habit of writing every day. It's a great idea and a fun exercise and brings people together into a support network, but it isn't really something I need right now. It's not that I can't find the time, just that I've found something that works better for me.
Now if only this bastard would complete so I could move onto something with an actual deadline...
Monday 25 November 2013
Sunday 24 November 2013
To London, to London, jiggity-jig
I keep winding up in London, unintentionally, for purposes that are not entirely work-related. Not that I'm complaining.
Monday was a double-barreled trip, in that I had the early afternoon to find an accountant - my housemate says 'find' is the wrong verb, because they don't grow like mushrooms in the forest to be picked willy-nilly by passersby, but what does he know - and the evening to find a particular little subterranean bar in Soho where Windmill was throwing wine at its 2014 novelists. Neither of which are particularly daunting, unless you feel like an impostor and keep expecting someone to send you to play with the finger-paints until nap time.
"Finding an accountant" consisted of getting lost in a dodgier-looking part of Camden for a good half-hour, then having the reincarnation of Winston Churchill repeatedly explain that I need a national insurance number and everything I spend money on regularly is tax deductible. My family keeps trying to pass me on to accountants that they know socially, but the one thing that the professors at the UEA have not hedged on recommending is finding someone that specializes in writers and other creatives that are horrible at numbers - while I was sitting in the reception area, a woman wearing an expensive wool birds nest as a dress came in and left two shopping bags full of receipts and other papers and said, "see you next quarter!" while walking out.
And the Windmill Party - publishers, publicists, sales people, agents, Waterstones representatives, and a smattering of rather shy authors in a tiny bar decorated with next year's paperbacks. The decor was functional - five of the authors whose books had been scattered on the tables, shelves, and mantlepiece read during the evening. At first, people picked up the books, flicked through them, and put them down carefully before determining that no one was looking and sliding them subtly into handbags. Then Jason stood up and invited everyone to take as many as they wanted - and the vultures descended. My picture of the London publishing scene now consists of very well dressed people, wine glasses in hand, jumping over each other to get unedited proof copies of next year's books and cramming as many as they could fit into their bags - Windmill brought tote bags for everyone, it was that kind of event. A bit like a strip club for bibliophiles, except you got to take the girls home afterwards.
Besides the oodles of free books, the gallons of free wine, standing next to Sebastian Faulks and hearing Nick Harkaway read from Angelmaker (it is goooooooooood, trust me), my high point of the evening was meeting David Vann.
This bears explanation.
David Vann wrote Legend of a Suicide, a collection of short stories and a novella that explore some very concentrated territory that you might be able to guess from the title; what you probably won't be able to guess (spoiler) from the title is that the book contains about one hundred pages of a man dragging the decomposing body of his dead son through the Alaskan wilderness. Short stories are not meant to be consumed in marathon sittings. Short stories about suicide, probably even more so. Legends was a set text for Theory and Practice of Fiction last year, so (surprise!) I read it in a week, and then spent the next few months trying to cope with what I read.
So, when I found out that he was at the party, I went and found him, and told him that I would never forgive him for that book. And then we talked about Medea adaptations and castration in fiction. He's pretty cool.
Monday was a double-barreled trip, in that I had the early afternoon to find an accountant - my housemate says 'find' is the wrong verb, because they don't grow like mushrooms in the forest to be picked willy-nilly by passersby, but what does he know - and the evening to find a particular little subterranean bar in Soho where Windmill was throwing wine at its 2014 novelists. Neither of which are particularly daunting, unless you feel like an impostor and keep expecting someone to send you to play with the finger-paints until nap time.
"Finding an accountant" consisted of getting lost in a dodgier-looking part of Camden for a good half-hour, then having the reincarnation of Winston Churchill repeatedly explain that I need a national insurance number and everything I spend money on regularly is tax deductible. My family keeps trying to pass me on to accountants that they know socially, but the one thing that the professors at the UEA have not hedged on recommending is finding someone that specializes in writers and other creatives that are horrible at numbers - while I was sitting in the reception area, a woman wearing an expensive wool birds nest as a dress came in and left two shopping bags full of receipts and other papers and said, "see you next quarter!" while walking out.
And the Windmill Party - publishers, publicists, sales people, agents, Waterstones representatives, and a smattering of rather shy authors in a tiny bar decorated with next year's paperbacks. The decor was functional - five of the authors whose books had been scattered on the tables, shelves, and mantlepiece read during the evening. At first, people picked up the books, flicked through them, and put them down carefully before determining that no one was looking and sliding them subtly into handbags. Then Jason stood up and invited everyone to take as many as they wanted - and the vultures descended. My picture of the London publishing scene now consists of very well dressed people, wine glasses in hand, jumping over each other to get unedited proof copies of next year's books and cramming as many as they could fit into their bags - Windmill brought tote bags for everyone, it was that kind of event. A bit like a strip club for bibliophiles, except you got to take the girls home afterwards.
Besides the oodles of free books, the gallons of free wine, standing next to Sebastian Faulks and hearing Nick Harkaway read from Angelmaker (it is goooooooooood, trust me), my high point of the evening was meeting David Vann.
This bears explanation.
David Vann wrote Legend of a Suicide, a collection of short stories and a novella that explore some very concentrated territory that you might be able to guess from the title; what you probably won't be able to guess (spoiler) from the title is that the book contains about one hundred pages of a man dragging the decomposing body of his dead son through the Alaskan wilderness. Short stories are not meant to be consumed in marathon sittings. Short stories about suicide, probably even more so. Legends was a set text for Theory and Practice of Fiction last year, so (surprise!) I read it in a week, and then spent the next few months trying to cope with what I read.
So, when I found out that he was at the party, I went and found him, and told him that I would never forgive him for that book. And then we talked about Medea adaptations and castration in fiction. He's pretty cool.
Wednesday 6 November 2013
A shoebox of one's own
I may have mentioned before the two things all STEM PGR students say that makes me want to do my weasel in a henhouse imitation: "Of course you have funding, everyone has funding!" and "so where's your office?" Apparently, watching partially cooked beetles have sex nets you cash and a desk of your own, while researching the effect of censorship on education doesn't, but eh. The first issue was fixed with the successful unloading of my BFA dissertation, (more commonly known as 'the reason I never left my room senior year') and the second issue got a patch-fix yesterday. True, there is a desk in my bedroom - in fact, I'm typing this while sitting there - but working in the same space you eat, sleep, read trashy novels and shoot head-crabs on the weekends quickly starts feeling a lot like wearing the same dirty pajamas for days on end. It's just not that nice.
Somewhere in there I had the realization that I'm never going to get any respect - undergrads aren't as good as masters students, masters aren't as good as PhDers, PhDers aren't as good as professors or postdocs, and when you finally make it to the top of the pile the whole world gives you side-eye because they think that what you're doing is pointless and why didn't you become a scientist, you drain on society? But one of the privileges of Humanities research students is the monthly (yay!) study carrel - a desk, a lamp, a window, and a chair, with enough space to get in and out of the chair, and a door that (oh joy, oh rapture) locks. It's not an office, you have to get on the waitlist again every month and do a good bit of moving around, but it still counts as a space of one's own, a lockable space where quite a few of my books are now waiting for me, and where I actually get work done because there are literally no distractions. And the more keys on my keychain, the more I feel like a real adult.
 |
| The reason I'm in a good mood today |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)