'Bred Crumbs

Next time you have time to kill on a Saturday morning or weekday afternoon, tune into children's programming on Fox or the WB and watch it until you see a Maxaroni commercial. And think to yourself: This is so Poochie.

(That's Poochie the Itchy & Scratchy dog, not Poochie the West Virginia Libertarian and artist.)

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On tonight's John Doe, our hero, trying to identify a killer on an airplane, suggested using a "firefly." He meant we was going to use phosporescence to find blood residue on the murderer's hands. I had expected him to use an annoyingly contrived TV series to bore the culprit into submission.

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[Longish thoughts about the art and craft of writing. Consume as desired.]

So as I mentioned earlier, I crossed the National Novel Writing Month finish line, completing The Hand of Todd in the appointed time frame. The book is facile and preposterous, driven entirely by odd sexual fantasies lovingly detailed and bizarre mishaps with dire consequences, broken up by so many coffeehouse chats and aimless wandering through keggers that it's as if I've given my story the college life I didn't have.

But it is more than 50,000 words long, it was written in less than a month, and it is done.

Knowing where I was going – the ending and some milestones along the way – was the only reason I was able to commit myself to near-nightly writing and reach my goal: actually writing my first novel instead of just toying with ideas and dismissing or dodging them before putting real work into them. But the foreknowledge also limited discovery, which made it harder to bring my characters to life and create an eventful story. The same might not be true if I weren't wedded to a deadline and a word count, but as it was my characters could never fully explore and grow, partly because of my constant struggle to imagine, but also because they had all these appointments they had to get to.

Nonetheless, some magic did happen.

The first Sunday of the month, three days into the project, I woke up and realized that, going into my second chapter, I really ought to come up with some small incident that would lay a foundation for later plot development before I got to the main event I had planned for the chapter. I had no idea what the small incident would be until I went into the place most of my best ideas happen: the bathroom. By the time I got out of the shower, I had dreamed up an completely new bizarre occurance that wound up becoming an entire new second chapter, and the idea had spawned two new, utterly unforeseen characters who helped bring the beginning of the novel to life, and wound up sticking around for much of the book. I even realized one of them might provide the solution to a plot problem I was facing in the middle of the story; and so it came to be.

A couple of weeks later, when I was up late writing the climax (figuratively and literally) of Chapter Eight – the part one of my new characters unexpectedly volunteered for during that shower – the story spilling forth in my head took a completely unexpected turn. I almost resisted it, but I realized that was folly, so I went with it. It fit in very well with other events in the book, and it gave me a huge start in trying to figure out what the hell would unfold in Chapter Nine, which had been a looming, weighty blank. I ended Chapter Eight as stunned as my hero.

Once I typed the last word (you) on Nov. 29, I set the book and many thoughts about it aside. Last Sunday night, I went to the local wrap party, where I was pleased to meet project organizer Chris Baty and bump into acquaintances who I didn't know had also taken the NaNoWriMo leap. The party was fun, but for the first time I felt some real regrets about my work. So many of the excerpts I read from other writers' work had, well, so much more happening in them than mine, and I was beginning a puritanical guilt jag about the volume of sex in my book (though everyone I mentioned this to at the party liked the sound of it). I'm past that, though. And if I really think there's some good in my work, but I want to repair some of the less-than-good, then that leads me to the next question: do I give Todd more of my time and thought, and revise it, or do I put it behind me and move on to something new?

This morning during my commute I started reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods (once again walking away from my rocky, long-term flirtation with Don Quijote). Before I even finished the first chapter, I was amazed at what I was reading, and wished I hadn't put off Gaiman novels for so long.* But the thing was, reading good writing didn't make me throw in the towel on my efforts. Instead, I saw what was good, learning from a master**, and I left the bus deciding that I will revise The Hand of Todd. NaNoWriMo taught me a strong lesson and proved an adage – the first step in being a writer is to write – and thanks to it I took a plunge I had long rationalized avoiding. I'm proud of doing so, but I'm still left with a written work I don't really want to share, at least not with more than a select, brave few. And while I don't think writing requires being read by anyone to be good and meaningful (millennia of diaries is evidence enough for that), such sharing is important to me. Now I see that writing a book worth sharing requires a second step: revising.

It will take more than a month, but I must approach it with the same kind of dedication that gave me something to revise. There's lots to look forward to: already, I have a glimpse of what The Hand of Todd lacks; just have to think hard and fill those holes. And I've rediscovered some old notions lost in the rush that should provide helpful fodder. Plus, the lack of a short deadline this time will keep me from grabbing the easiest, slightest ideas and hurrying ahead; yet, I won't have the excuse of writers' block, since I already have written this story once.

And sure enough, the ideas are already churning, tantalizing me like good friends on a raucous night out, goading me to keep going, distracting me from "more important" things, luring me surely into the drunken-logic adventure of creation.

·  ·  ·

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After weeks of reviewing hard hits that have resulted in a bevy of fines, the NFL has decided to review the video game industry.

Yes, NFL, I'm sure it's the videogames' fault. I'm sure it has nothing to do with building a greed-intensive business around a game that requires actual, physical violence, or with overpaid employees who perpetrate thuggish behavior on and off the field and who willingly make a living from fondling other men yet harbor a stupid, pathetic fear of finding that exciting, or with fans who excuse all of that. (Articles on ESPN and San Francisco Chronicle websites; ESPN link via Metafilter)

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My TiVo-loving friends have never mentioned the part where TiVo decides what you would like to watch, a la Amazon recommendations, but more assertive. The linked Wall Street Journal article (via TV Tattle) is the second time in a week I've seen references to men complaining that TiVo thinks they're gay. Attention, Basil Iwanyk: if you are compelled to describe yourself as the "straightest guy on earth," then you definitely aren't.

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