Rat Idea
Thursday 8:30 a.m.
People are a bit odd about writers. I hope I never do a public reading. I usually don't tell people I'm a writer. If you do, they ask you where you get your ideas from. They really do.
Ideas are, of course, compouded things. I had one this morning while lying in bed. It could change my life. It probably won't.
I've got a draft of a novel which is half the size it should be. It's in two bits. There's the juju bit, which readers of this blog will be familiar with, and there the facing story sort of, which is really about getting away from having a job. Anyway, it involves ficionalising aspects of things from my past employment. So I've got these two threads and I'm trying to balance them with a narrative voice. It's too short. That's a problem. I could bulk up both threads of this story, but I think it would loss shape. In fact, it would turn out like The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, but the BBBW was supposed to be a buddhist primer and travelogue and not really a novel as such. So let's have a look at the narrative voice.
The way to make this work as a novel is to go at the narrarive voice from the point of view given by the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Have the narrative voice be a joe who wants to become one of the rolls royce owning gurus with the fleets of aeroplanes. You'd have to do this with a light, amusing touch. So I could use stuff from this blog like calling people flatheids, etc. Obviously, before you get to the hundred foot statues at the top of Ben Nevis, you'd begin in places like the internet cave.
I might not be explaining this very well, but it could work. That's the book. I've now got the book.
Say you managed to write this book and it was an interesting enough and well written enough book. How could you sell it? You get an agent. You get the agent to sell the book to a publisher with the promotional idea that I will sit in an internet cave doing the Pet Bereavement Councelling Service for, say, nine hours a day. I'd like to be meditating that much every day by next year anyway.
If all this happened and was successful enough, I could try to convince someone to put up the money to send me to the Unheard of Island to spend months and months doing deity yoga. With the blog.
Of course, I don't want to be famous. I'd have to get the book published under my buddhist name and appear in the cave with the Groucho Marx glasses, nose and moustache.
This is integration. Great idea. I won't sell the book or get an agent or anything like that, but that doesn't matter. I'll have the book.
Good start to the day. I'm going to visit my mother in Bellshill today.
I'm giving up encouraging people to meditate, except members of my family. Basically, it's a waste of time. So no more flatheids from me, apart from using such terms to develope my narative voice (i.e I might not be able to resist!). So keep your heids flat so I can come and impress you with my narcissistic personlity disorder!! If you meditate, you'll end up worshipping demons. You will. I'm telling you!
I'm now trying to pretend I'm in a kind of heaven surrounded by deities. You don't emanate as a deity unless everyone else does. You should see Bellshill. It's a peaceful like Scottish village, a bit like Brigadoon and chock a block with deities!!
People are a bit odd about writers. I hope I never do a public reading. I usually don't tell people I'm a writer. If you do, they ask you where you get your ideas from. They really do.
Ideas are, of course, compouded things. I had one this morning while lying in bed. It could change my life. It probably won't.
I've got a draft of a novel which is half the size it should be. It's in two bits. There's the juju bit, which readers of this blog will be familiar with, and there the facing story sort of, which is really about getting away from having a job. Anyway, it involves ficionalising aspects of things from my past employment. So I've got these two threads and I'm trying to balance them with a narrative voice. It's too short. That's a problem. I could bulk up both threads of this story, but I think it would loss shape. In fact, it would turn out like The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, but the BBBW was supposed to be a buddhist primer and travelogue and not really a novel as such. So let's have a look at the narrative voice.
The way to make this work as a novel is to go at the narrarive voice from the point of view given by the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Have the narrative voice be a joe who wants to become one of the rolls royce owning gurus with the fleets of aeroplanes. You'd have to do this with a light, amusing touch. So I could use stuff from this blog like calling people flatheids, etc. Obviously, before you get to the hundred foot statues at the top of Ben Nevis, you'd begin in places like the internet cave.
I might not be explaining this very well, but it could work. That's the book. I've now got the book.
Say you managed to write this book and it was an interesting enough and well written enough book. How could you sell it? You get an agent. You get the agent to sell the book to a publisher with the promotional idea that I will sit in an internet cave doing the Pet Bereavement Councelling Service for, say, nine hours a day. I'd like to be meditating that much every day by next year anyway.
If all this happened and was successful enough, I could try to convince someone to put up the money to send me to the Unheard of Island to spend months and months doing deity yoga. With the blog.
Of course, I don't want to be famous. I'd have to get the book published under my buddhist name and appear in the cave with the Groucho Marx glasses, nose and moustache.
This is integration. Great idea. I won't sell the book or get an agent or anything like that, but that doesn't matter. I'll have the book.
Good start to the day. I'm going to visit my mother in Bellshill today.
I'm giving up encouraging people to meditate, except members of my family. Basically, it's a waste of time. So no more flatheids from me, apart from using such terms to develope my narative voice (i.e I might not be able to resist!). So keep your heids flat so I can come and impress you with my narcissistic personlity disorder!! If you meditate, you'll end up worshipping demons. You will. I'm telling you!
I'm now trying to pretend I'm in a kind of heaven surrounded by deities. You don't emanate as a deity unless everyone else does. You should see Bellshill. It's a peaceful like Scottish village, a bit like Brigadoon and chock a block with deities!!
posted by Hotboy at 8:33 AM
2 Comments:
I know what you mean about the ideas that come while you're still waking up. I was still only half-awake when I invented the rotary clothes-drier-cum-lawn-sprinkler. It was a big success until the drought came and they banned sprinklers.
You were asking, and I quote, about criagslist, by which I think you mean Craig's List. I'd heard of it, but how does it figure in your grand plan? By the way, have you factored in the spell checker?
Seriously, the book idea sounds just the sort of thing that they give the Booker Prize to. DBC Pierre started out just like you with an overdraft, and just look where he is now!
HB - I apologise for any rudeness this week on my part. It's the injured back and the lingering virus making me tetchy. That and being surrounded by rude Australians. Now it seems I've got a sore ankle too.
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