the book to throw at you
Today, ladies and gents, I am writing Shock Tea. This is good. It gives me something to do. Oh, I know what you're thinking..."what about your Ultramarine Land Raider." Well, its nearly done...nearly...I think. I've got this idea to put little techmarines scrambling over it. In any case, a few parts still need to be painted and all that. Regardless...
I am preparing scenery for Avram's visit. It will most likely be a horrendous time of blasting away Chaos, Eldar, Marines, and Harlequins. At Big Lots today, I saw that for $4 I could get a tank that looked pretty much exactly like a Leman Russ, and well... You all don't care. 40k shit. I'll stop.
So, the Shock. I began writing Shock Tea something like five years ago. I wrote the first eighty pages with crazy energy. Since then the energy has sort of fizzled, but I'm still keeping at it. I want to finish. I want to publish. I have fantasies about defending the book to ultra right wing Christian organizations, and appearing on day time talk shows with a hood over my head--like later stages Cobra Commander--but those fantasies can not come true if I do not finish the book.
My job thus far is a bit easier. I have the next chapter completely mapped out--scene for scene--which is something I don't normally do. Now all I have to do is write the scenes. So I sat down to write the next scene, got a great idea for a different scene, wrote it, and now I'm off my outline again. Christ, when will it end. I'm happy with the scene I wrote mind you, but I just want to be done. I just want to get Broken Bobby out of the mental ward so that I can begin the end of the book.
I'm ranting, but there's a point to all this. Listen folks, I am in the middle of what I consider the second of three parts to the book. In Lord of the Rings jargon, I just leveled the first of two towers. Just one more tower to go and then the Hobbits can start weeping. Tolkien's book, however, was three volumes. He could afford to be on page six hundred or whatever and still only be half done. Fantasy fans love that kind of shit. I'm not writing fantasy. It's close. I'm not going to lie to you, it's really close, but no cigar.
And I am on page 418. I'm half done and I'm on page 418. Now, even if that was a lie. Even if I were two thirds done, I'm still on page 418. Does anyone know a publisher? Could someone ask for me: what are the chances of getting published when your first work is 600 pages. I mean, that's ridiculous. I love to read, and if some guy comes out, no short stories, no other novels, and the only thing he has is a 600 page postmodern monster of a novel, I'm not going to read him. I love David Foster Wallace, but I'm not touching Infinite Jest unless I have to.
Earlier today I came to the conclusion that I'm going to have to write another book, something in the neighborhood of a 100 pages, just to get published so that I can get Shock Tea finished. And so, I start thinking about the other book. And I start thinking, 'well, if that's the first thing to get published, doesn't it make sense to stop writing Shock Tea and start writing that other book.' But then I realize two things: 1--if I stop writing Shock Tea, I may never start writing it again, and 2--if the other book isn't like Shock Tea then when I try to push Shock Tea on my publisher, he's going to say, "this isn't at all like Wednesdays With Wimbley. Why don't you write another book like that instead?"--effectively putting Shock Tea on the back burner in an infinte regress.
And it is here that I have to be honest with myself. It's not a publisher I need at all. I need a psychiatrist. I am drawn to impossible to finish projects. I am obsessively living out the green golf ball joke. I have boxes filled with miniatures each of which will take me hours and hours to paint. I have bookshelves covered with books, each of which will take me days to read. And I am writing a novel, the end of which rests far beyond the horizon of my speculation. I've come to think that playing video games is a waste of my time, but I'm wrong. They, at least, end.
I am preparing scenery for Avram's visit. It will most likely be a horrendous time of blasting away Chaos, Eldar, Marines, and Harlequins. At Big Lots today, I saw that for $4 I could get a tank that looked pretty much exactly like a Leman Russ, and well... You all don't care. 40k shit. I'll stop.
So, the Shock. I began writing Shock Tea something like five years ago. I wrote the first eighty pages with crazy energy. Since then the energy has sort of fizzled, but I'm still keeping at it. I want to finish. I want to publish. I have fantasies about defending the book to ultra right wing Christian organizations, and appearing on day time talk shows with a hood over my head--like later stages Cobra Commander--but those fantasies can not come true if I do not finish the book.
My job thus far is a bit easier. I have the next chapter completely mapped out--scene for scene--which is something I don't normally do. Now all I have to do is write the scenes. So I sat down to write the next scene, got a great idea for a different scene, wrote it, and now I'm off my outline again. Christ, when will it end. I'm happy with the scene I wrote mind you, but I just want to be done. I just want to get Broken Bobby out of the mental ward so that I can begin the end of the book.
I'm ranting, but there's a point to all this. Listen folks, I am in the middle of what I consider the second of three parts to the book. In Lord of the Rings jargon, I just leveled the first of two towers. Just one more tower to go and then the Hobbits can start weeping. Tolkien's book, however, was three volumes. He could afford to be on page six hundred or whatever and still only be half done. Fantasy fans love that kind of shit. I'm not writing fantasy. It's close. I'm not going to lie to you, it's really close, but no cigar.
And I am on page 418. I'm half done and I'm on page 418. Now, even if that was a lie. Even if I were two thirds done, I'm still on page 418. Does anyone know a publisher? Could someone ask for me: what are the chances of getting published when your first work is 600 pages. I mean, that's ridiculous. I love to read, and if some guy comes out, no short stories, no other novels, and the only thing he has is a 600 page postmodern monster of a novel, I'm not going to read him. I love David Foster Wallace, but I'm not touching Infinite Jest unless I have to.
Earlier today I came to the conclusion that I'm going to have to write another book, something in the neighborhood of a 100 pages, just to get published so that I can get Shock Tea finished. And so, I start thinking about the other book. And I start thinking, 'well, if that's the first thing to get published, doesn't it make sense to stop writing Shock Tea and start writing that other book.' But then I realize two things: 1--if I stop writing Shock Tea, I may never start writing it again, and 2--if the other book isn't like Shock Tea then when I try to push Shock Tea on my publisher, he's going to say, "this isn't at all like Wednesdays With Wimbley. Why don't you write another book like that instead?"--effectively putting Shock Tea on the back burner in an infinte regress.
And it is here that I have to be honest with myself. It's not a publisher I need at all. I need a psychiatrist. I am drawn to impossible to finish projects. I am obsessively living out the green golf ball joke. I have boxes filled with miniatures each of which will take me hours and hours to paint. I have bookshelves covered with books, each of which will take me days to read. And I am writing a novel, the end of which rests far beyond the horizon of my speculation. I've come to think that playing video games is a waste of my time, but I'm wrong. They, at least, end.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
2:15 PM
2 Comments:
Keep the power, baby. Very inspiring. "Rock, you rock."
--love, Wifey
Just write Shock T. Even if it means writing the bits of Shock T that aren't the parts you thought you weren't going to write. Novels take a long time. I'm going on nine years with mine. And it looks like it may be a trilogy, with a fourth book on one character on his own because I have all this stuff that really belongs on its own and he kinda deserves a book of his own.
So keep writing Shock T. Don't worry about a publisher or getting it published or if some magic pixie will read what you have and immediately give you a big publishing contract to sign.
Just keep writing until you feel like you are done with Shock T. When you feel it is as done as it is ever going to be. THEN you will be ready to make it ready to publish and you can decide if you want to publish it as a trilogy or 2000 page single book or as a long running series of matchbook covers.
So you are in the MIDDLE of writing your novel. I can't wait for when you think you have finished it and then have to go through the agony of editing the bad boy.
You want something to do? Go through what you have and get it ready for me to look at when I visit. Burn it to disk so I can take it with me and then write an exhaustive and complete consideration with as much of the text under my belt as possible. Your blog bits aren't enough for me to adequately get a feel of the novel as a whole.
Part of what I will do is attempt to find "sectionable" chapters of the novel that you can submit to literary magazines and matchbook printers so that when your tome is ready, you have already laid some groundwork to ensure 1) that millions of eager Monstrosions are clamoring for more of that wonderful wonderful Shock T stuff that they can't live without. This will ensure that 2) publishers know your name is synonymous with already published portions of the novel, with already established wallets willing to empty themselves. If the publishers know it will sell, they will sell it. You have to get some of it out there now so that you can begin getting some Shock T groupies who regularly email the publishers of the magazine that publishes you for backissues that they then sell on ebay for prodigious amounts.
This will ensure that you can go to your own booksignings dressed up like a Cobra Commander and people will actually show up and buy your book for a second time just to get your personal scrawl on the inside cover and lie prostrate while babbling the sacred chant in front of you as you smile benignly down upon them from beneath your hood.
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