A friend of mine generously offered to read the first, completed half of my novel, so I sent it to her and am awaiting her reply while I slog away on the second half, the part where the already-swift pace picks up even more and there is an attempted murder that I haven't decided if it will be a completed murder. First I have to raise the stakes with Oli's relationship with Zaven, make returning to Boston seem less like a good idea (Eric Leaf's wife confronting her), have Dahlia threaten to put the make on Oli's newly-widowed bio-dad (who she hasn't spoken to but rarely and was looking forward to having that bitch out of the way to have a relationship with him), Orson's bizarre disappearance after breaking the heart of his dad's ex-girlfriend, who is having a midlife crisis that involves attempting to bed Orson (which Orson, always used to getting something for free from a woman, ends up regretting), all of which ends up at the beach house in Capitola where the BOV's are having their fundraiser (i.e. murdering Dahlia and riling up Olivia so she'll operate the weapon), Oli not sure she wants to risk all of this for, what, money? Are you kidding?
So I'm at that point where I am sure that the first 119 pages are utter drivel and lacking that which makes a novel great. I'm currently on the Infine Jest Toilet Program, where I have vowed to read three pages of Infinite Jest everytime I sit down to use the toilet, and I'm finding that a lot of the reason that book is so long is because DFW describes everything and everyone in such microscopic detail that entire paragraphs go by in which nothing has happened. Doing improv comedy every weekend of my life for the past four years has given me this idea that you get into a scene, you get out the important shit, and then you get out. Perhaps this isn't the correct way of novelizing. Maybe I need to stroke the shaft a little longer...
(sorry, I cannot discuss Other People's Novels without tired comparisons to masturbation. I am low.)
And by O.P.N. I mean the shaft-stroking prose of some wanky piece of shit about missing children, endless scenic vistas in exotic locales like coastal Ireland, any novel in which a dead person is the narrator, or any sack of crap about a "sexual awakening." Anything florid, flowery, dewdroppy, or poetry-esque, I hate. But this shit gets published every damn day. I prefer down-and-dirty writing about saggy tits, humiliation, an assessment of a room that does not refer to any surface as "rich" or "sumptuous," and snarky observations about the failings of humanity. THAT'S writing.
Argh.
Posted by Zerd at January 13, 2007 06:32 PM