Blogging The Novel's Progress
It lies steadily, somewhere between my abdomen and sternum, waiting to be drawn out from me by long hours of hard thinking and sustained soul searching. It is the well-stored but seemingly reachable dream: to create my own Owen Meany, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Rodion Raskolnikov, Duddy Kravitz or Mark Renton – or at least a well-though-out homage to their memory.
It begins with a vision of workability that simply isn’t possible: a mere eighteen straight months that I would do nothing but devote myself entirely to penning and then perfecting the greatest novel that I am humanly capable of conceiving at this point in my existence. (I’d still talk to my wife, play with my daughter, clean the house, eat, exercise and groom myself.)
It has a genuine hold-up: each time I have the opportunity to scribble a new page of my masterpiece-in-the-making, I instead catch myself assembling a fresh entry for my burgeoning blog. This, I deem, is a noble pursuit in the art of noting the weekly goings-on.
However, there is so much more at stake than capturing my opinion of what happened in any given 7-day period for the few people who can be bothered to sift through it. So, my blogging now will take the form of updating my progress on this new lengthy work.
I will try, starting immediately, to devote myself, in manageable increments, to this novel pursuit. To this end, I began a few days ago to jot down a couple of opening lines, which have since been transformed into a page and a half of what I deem decent work. Of course I retain the right to change, alter and edit it at any time and according to any whim I might have.
It has no title yet, begins with some notion of autobiography, and will blossom from there until it seems to be entirely about anyone but me. Without further hold-up, it begins like this:
The effervescent five-year-old girl with hair awash in long blonde and bushy curls skips and twirls on her way to her local suburban kindergarten class one early fall morning, her doting father in tow.
The charming little lady is rarely if ever overlooked by those she passes. She is so utterly unfettered of suspicion and shame, and so totally enamored with childhood exuberance that all parents and grandparents, and most young people, can’t help but take in her presence.
On this day, the tall, jaunty and quick-footed retiree who always walks to get his newspaper instead of having it delivered because he once mentioned he needs a reason to ‘get up and at it’; he smiles easily and says ‘hello young lady’ before nodding at the girl’s father and ambling on up the block.
The father and daughter eye each other and giggle, a soothingly familiar exchange for them. Daddy holds out his hand and his little girl cheerfully places hers inside. Anyone looking on would easily notice they are blissful in their early morning routine. In a minute he will drop her off at school, into the care of her teacher and the company of her classmates.
She loves school and always enters jubilantly and without fuss, after giving her father the kiss on the lips he rarely has to remind her about.
It is 8:15 a.m. in suburbia and this is a prime example how days routinely unfold in the centre of this family’s universe. And they would keep going this way, according to Mommy and Daddy’s loosely conceived plan and barring harrowing incident, as long as someone from an evil-doing dimension doesn’t come along and screw it all up, or as long as…
…the whole family don’t all get swallowed up by the horrible monster that their dear daughter once saw in her worst-ever nightmare (which she never had again, after much soothing from Mommy and Daddy)
Or,
…an otherworldly ball of hail doesn’t smash through the car window as the family is on their way to pick up a new batch of groceries and assorted household cleaning items one Saturday morning
Or,
…Beatles records never stop playing on the FM frequency, and we can always count on being freed from small anxieties by the simple beauty of In My Life, Yesterday, Norwegian Wood and Yellow Submarine (but not the scary Piggies or Bungalow Bill from the While Album)
Or,
…God wants things to remain this way, because apparently he has the power to blast everything to hell in one fell swoop if he wants to, according to the crazy frizzy-haired lady who screams her nonsensical laments as she walks through the older parts of downtown
Or,
…Lula (real name: Luanda) and her Daddy Rolf keep loving each other in the simple, honest old-time way that’s seen him through the darkest days of a battle with cancer and has driven into him the impetus to take up what he deems a fabulous new hobby: creating his own line of dolls (for girls) and action figures (for boys). Making children happy through gentle movement and animation comes naturally to Rolf, and this new venture is the result of an epiphany he had on his darkest day.
It begins with a vision of workability that simply isn’t possible: a mere eighteen straight months that I would do nothing but devote myself entirely to penning and then perfecting the greatest novel that I am humanly capable of conceiving at this point in my existence. (I’d still talk to my wife, play with my daughter, clean the house, eat, exercise and groom myself.)
It has a genuine hold-up: each time I have the opportunity to scribble a new page of my masterpiece-in-the-making, I instead catch myself assembling a fresh entry for my burgeoning blog. This, I deem, is a noble pursuit in the art of noting the weekly goings-on.
However, there is so much more at stake than capturing my opinion of what happened in any given 7-day period for the few people who can be bothered to sift through it. So, my blogging now will take the form of updating my progress on this new lengthy work.
I will try, starting immediately, to devote myself, in manageable increments, to this novel pursuit. To this end, I began a few days ago to jot down a couple of opening lines, which have since been transformed into a page and a half of what I deem decent work. Of course I retain the right to change, alter and edit it at any time and according to any whim I might have.
It has no title yet, begins with some notion of autobiography, and will blossom from there until it seems to be entirely about anyone but me. Without further hold-up, it begins like this:
The effervescent five-year-old girl with hair awash in long blonde and bushy curls skips and twirls on her way to her local suburban kindergarten class one early fall morning, her doting father in tow.
The charming little lady is rarely if ever overlooked by those she passes. She is so utterly unfettered of suspicion and shame, and so totally enamored with childhood exuberance that all parents and grandparents, and most young people, can’t help but take in her presence.
On this day, the tall, jaunty and quick-footed retiree who always walks to get his newspaper instead of having it delivered because he once mentioned he needs a reason to ‘get up and at it’; he smiles easily and says ‘hello young lady’ before nodding at the girl’s father and ambling on up the block.
The father and daughter eye each other and giggle, a soothingly familiar exchange for them. Daddy holds out his hand and his little girl cheerfully places hers inside. Anyone looking on would easily notice they are blissful in their early morning routine. In a minute he will drop her off at school, into the care of her teacher and the company of her classmates.
She loves school and always enters jubilantly and without fuss, after giving her father the kiss on the lips he rarely has to remind her about.
It is 8:15 a.m. in suburbia and this is a prime example how days routinely unfold in the centre of this family’s universe. And they would keep going this way, according to Mommy and Daddy’s loosely conceived plan and barring harrowing incident, as long as someone from an evil-doing dimension doesn’t come along and screw it all up, or as long as…
…the whole family don’t all get swallowed up by the horrible monster that their dear daughter once saw in her worst-ever nightmare (which she never had again, after much soothing from Mommy and Daddy)
Or,
…an otherworldly ball of hail doesn’t smash through the car window as the family is on their way to pick up a new batch of groceries and assorted household cleaning items one Saturday morning
Or,
…Beatles records never stop playing on the FM frequency, and we can always count on being freed from small anxieties by the simple beauty of In My Life, Yesterday, Norwegian Wood and Yellow Submarine (but not the scary Piggies or Bungalow Bill from the While Album)
Or,
…God wants things to remain this way, because apparently he has the power to blast everything to hell in one fell swoop if he wants to, according to the crazy frizzy-haired lady who screams her nonsensical laments as she walks through the older parts of downtown
Or,
…Lula (real name: Luanda) and her Daddy Rolf keep loving each other in the simple, honest old-time way that’s seen him through the darkest days of a battle with cancer and has driven into him the impetus to take up what he deems a fabulous new hobby: creating his own line of dolls (for girls) and action figures (for boys). Making children happy through gentle movement and animation comes naturally to Rolf, and this new venture is the result of an epiphany he had on his darkest day.
posted by Erich Schmidt | 10:37 AM
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