Caution: Genius at Work

As I hinted in an earlier post, I've been tinkering sporadically with writing a book. With ample free time, significant progress has been made. I've written three chapters, amounting to about 23 single-spaced Word pages, which would be somewhere in the ball park of 30 to 40 normal book pages. This doesn't mean that the writing is good or enjoyable... I'm just saying that it exists.

I've been working on it for probably the last six months or so, though my commitment often wanes or shifts to more immediate concerns (like the online class, sleeping in on weekends, and watching game shows). For quite some time, I didn't really want to tell anyone, figuring that I'd just be mocked mercilessly. "How's that novel coming, Hemingway?" "Get that publishing deal yet, Shakespeare?" And since the story had only developed into a pre-infancy stage, hell practically just a used condom stage, I really didn't want to talk about it.

I still don't want to discuss the plot in any great detail, mostly because it seems to change every time I write more of the story. "No, no!" I'll shout to nobody. "Eugene wouldn't do that, and Phoebe CERTAINLY wouldn't do that." So my outline shifts to suit whatever new character wrinkle I've worked into the narrative. For that reason, when you get right down to it, writing is really a colossal pain in the ass. Even though I've got 23 single-spaced pages now, I've probably re-written those pages three times. And they'll probably get re-written again as new stuff develops. Hell, I had an entire first chapter written before deciding that the whole thing sucked a testicle and chucking it into the discard pile.

Tasty Aside: I will hint that the plot was inspired by a blog post that I wrote about six months ago. Take that for what it's worth.

Aside from learning that revision is a cruel but necessary evil, I've taken other lessons away from this project already. For instance, characters are much better when they're wildly flawed. When I started, I imagined a group of totally awesome characters who were badass, witty, and got laid with alarming regularity. Quickly one realizes that you can only ride "total awesomeness" for a few pages before you run out of shit to do with it. So I splatter my canvas with heavy coats of arrogance, emotional turmoil, existential crises, stupidity, and just plain asshole behavior. Suddenly people do stuff that's a lot more interesting. The lesson seems obvious in retrospect, but when you're actually the one writing, the temptation to make all your characters exaggerated fantasies of how you wish you were is extremely tantalizing.

Anothing double-edged sword that I still have trouble wielding comes from using my own life as inspiration. Most, if not all, of my characters are based on people I know. Some of the characterizations are vague or simply draw on people's personalities while changing their life events. Others are complete ripoffs. Batmite, for instance, serves as the the direct parallel for one of the characters, and he wholeheartedly supports my fictionalized creation. He's just too damned colorful to pass up, and I mean that in only a half-racist way.

It should come as no great surprise that I'm creating a comedy. I enjoy making people laugh, and if I may say so, I think I'm pretty good at it in written form (though I envy people who can tell a well-constructed funny story in person). I still need to work on my character's inner motivations (when the narrator tells what the characters are thinking and feeling rather than indicating plot developments or backstory) and some of the dialogue. Dialogue is surprisingly hard to pull off convincingly because you want it to sound natural without including all of the "umms" and "likes," awkward pauses, and trivial small talk that litters real conversations. It has to sound real without being real. I should have been a physicist; it something sounds real without being real, it's probably just quantum mechanics.

Recently, writing this book has become something of a compulsion, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think about the damned thing all the time, and I'm convinced that I *have* to write it just to get it on the page. When I started it, I expected to either lose interest in a few days or crap out some trash to sell for a quick buck to a publisher operating out of an old Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips. But now I actually want it to be good, and I'm beginning to think I could actually do something worthwhile with it. Who knows? Maybe you might see JP (hopefully with a sweet badass pseudonym) as a published man in your favorite bookstore.

Or the plot could be reworked as the script for a B-grade skin flick. I think I might even prefer that option.

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"You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me angry!"