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Watch me wrestle with a writing challenge, Jack Bauer-style. |
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An on-line add for a CD promised to teach me how to write a book in 28 days. I gave myself 2 months. Can I do that? Countdown begins June 21, 2005. |
| The following events take place between 19:00 pm and 24:30 pm on June 21 in an apartment not far away from Lake Leman, Switzerland. In my pants, a presidential erection... It was the longest night of my life. Well, may be a wrong after-action report. Anyway. I began my novel last night, and I am excited about it. Thus the erection reference above. I listened to the advice of a person I know and decided that this time, it won't be a linear writing exercise. The thought gave me an immediate rush of adrenaline. There were a few scenes that I was dying to write out for quite a while now, but they were supposed to come in the middle and towards the end of the novel. I was not looking forward to writing out dozens of pages leading to those scenes. Now I will go straight to writing those exciting scenes. So, I told my girlfrind about my 1-month writing challenge, sat down, looked at an empty page and began with... some icecream. Creamy, luxurious, Belgian Chocolate type. Some people smoke a cigarette over a cup of coffee, watching the coffee steam mix with the smoke in the air in front of them. I don't smoke, and I don't drink coffee. So the melting of the icecream was my meditation trigger. Then I brainstormed. I fired up my brand-new Power Writer and poured out all the ideas that were crawing in my head since the previous night. The title that I gave my novel excited my imagination, and I was able to brainstorm over 30 possible scenes just based on that title. I felt like a gold digger, looking at a collection of newly found nuggets, some more valuable then others, but every single one with a potential for profit. When the ideas dried out, I did a few google picture searches on some key words, and browsed through the pictures and fotos that those searches returned to me. That gave me another 10 ideas or so, many of them quite wild. I jotted them down, and saved the pictures. All this took me a couple of hours... I intentionally did not organise these ideas into any sequence. I just left them sit there on the page. I know the rough timeline of the novel, so I don't really have to sort things out. Before going to sleep, I could not help writing one scene... Once I began writing, I could not stop till the scene was complete. That was well after midnight. So, the 'honeymoon' stage of writing began well. What will come next? Who knows... |
| So tonight's still the prep night. Background In the past, I began this novel three times. Every time, when I reached the magical point of 120 pages, I scrapped the whole thing. Once, it was too blog-like. Then, it was too history-book-like. The third time... not sure, I guess I just got tired of it all. An important point on research. I've read tons of books on the novel's time period and location. I breathe and live the location: its smells, sights, tastes... the details are boiling inside my brain, spilling out in unrelated conversations, making people smile at me with pity. Look into the future This time, I hope (HOPE) it will be different. I will have an APPROACH. I never had an approach before - I just wrote. My preparation tonight included: - Putting my son and my GF to their beds a couple of hours ago. She's tired tonight, so she fell asleep early. - Installing the Power Writer software. It's expensive, but I like how it looks and feels. - Reading up on the 'Write a book in 28 days!' pitch. I am revving to begin, but I remember my promise to start tomorrow. - Staring at the wall for a long time with my mouth open. Tomorrow, if all goes well and I have time, I'll begin. |
| I've always wanted to write a novel. Didn't you? Just one? So, tomorrow I'll start. Here are the limitations and conditions: I am not a native speaker, but I will be writing in English. My ego must be bigger than the Moon. Plus, English brings more money. I have a full time job. Very full time, in fact. My normal work day starts around 8 am, and goes on till 7 pm. Sometimes I work till midnight. I go on frequent business trips around the world - last three were to Thailand, Japan and Turkey (I am based in Switzerland). I come home exhausted. It's a high-pressure, up-or-out kind of job. A new restructuring started a few months ago. Thousands of people would lose jobs. It hit close to home aleady: my ex-wife, who also works there, was informed that she'd lose her job this September. I have a child. I have 50% custody for my son after the divorce. Call me a 50% single dad . I guess you know what it means: bring to school in the morning, pick up in the evening, weekends in the zoo, etc. etc. I have a demanding girlfriend. She hates it when I write. She thinks I steal time from our relationship when I am writing. So I have to do it so that she does not think I am doing it too much. And, last but not least... I am passionate about the topic. I want to try to get it out of my system, or prove to myself that I can't. So I will keep you updated, day-by-day, on how it goes... any advice, perspective, feedback, encouragement welcome! And maybe, while following this Blog, you could learn something for your own writing, who knows? |
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