More writing

More thoughts on my novel.

I really like Max Barry's writing, he is author of Syrup and Jennifer Government. I plan to visit him if and when I visit Australia. I'd be intersted to know if he's still writing. I think he should continue. I want to do something similar to what he did, a dystopia of capitalism gone horribly wrong, but do it better, do it well, like Nabokov did in Bend Sinister. I also want to use Tolkein's device in one book I read in which a boy is wandering the street living life as a pretty normal person, and there's a huckster with a bucket of water who says one dunk will change your life completely. The boy is eventually sucked into it, perhaps because of the reactions of the people who are walking away, I don't remember why, but he pays the small sum, and is dunked. As soon as his head is in the water, he is instantly transported to another world and another time. In that world and time, he has to save a princess and conquer a kingdom or some such thing, which goes on for most of the book, and for several years of life. He is then yanked back out of the water and finds himself back in the street just as he was when his head went in. I've always loved that device, only I might make it more modern? It's also a nod to Twain's Yankee in King Arthur's court, only in that book it was a humorous look at how technology which is simple to us now was not even imagined back in the day.

Among other things, I was musing this morning on the fact that so many career paths seem easy to follow as long as I'm following someone, such as my former roommate who works for Toll Brothers, or my former co-worker who is climbing up and up. I wandered into the realm of writing and thought about all the writers who were, well, writers before they published their name-making novels or works of serious literature. I can hardly go back and start over can I? Write for the college paper, then get hired into some smaller rag, then work my way up to a staff writer of some kind, at which point I produce a novel or non-fiction work, and make the decision to go on my own as a serious writer.

My wife sometimes complains that many people think that just because they decorated their house and it looks ok, they're suddenly qualified to hire themselves as an interior designer. I hope the same doesn't hold true for writing. I suppose that practice makes perfect, I mean, The Power and the Glory wasn't Graham Greene's first, or even second work. Then again, perfect practice makes perfect. Who will critique my work as I go along, to make sure I'm not just cranking out the same crap all the time?

This blog might be the place for it, but so far no one really gives comments. Besides I've seen the comments other people make on each other's blogs, it's usually something like "lol, u da man" which has good emotional value but a value value of -3 million.

To start writing... what and who to write for. I don't have to write poetry also, do I? I notice many writers are huge fans of poetry. I haven't really taken the time of late. But when I do read poetry, I will say, it's beautiful stuff. Even the broken bits in the book I'm reading are glimpses of beautiful well expressed evocations, less clumsy than the usual train tracks words usually make across the page.