Taking A Break From Writing My Script For Jerry
Just taking a break from "Seinfeld Under Water" (though that was the Upper East Side and I'm writing about the Lower West Side) to check in and express my nightly frustration with the crap progress of my novel.
I'm not sure if I remember correctly from last year's Wrimo Radio what the second week was supposed to be but apparently it's the week where novels start writing themselves as people have become familiar with the characters.
Well I'm very familiar with my characters in the same way that Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were familiar with theirs. If the five main characters in my novel were sitting at a diner in New York City, I could definitely have them discussing things with Beth, who has emerged as the main character (but who still has no last name) going, "did you ever notice?" and the other four, completely fleshed out, nodding their heads and saying the things that they should say based on the personalities I gave them.
Or maybe I can just be Jerry Seinfeld. "Did you ever notice how slightly bossy women with Napoleon complexes are actually really good at taking control in dangerous situations?"
I think everything is going according to plan because I never planned on having Beth become the leader of the group, it just made sense. Anthony is too neurotic and would be afraid of sticking his neck out. Allison is too shy. William is too much of a pretty boy and Brian is just not sane. Though I think Brian will redeem himself at some point by proving that he too can be helpful to get out of jams (after all, he is a survivalist).
Though I think the difference between me and seemingly everyone else who is past the halfway point is that they actually know how people will prove themselves.
Me, I'm just writing an episode of "Seinfeld" where the gang finds themselves in a burning building and Elaine develops organizational skills as opposed to just having a silly dance.
The irony? I never even liked "Seinfeld"!
---
One of my favorite lines in "Thank You For Smoking" is the one where the lobbyist is pitching the idea of more cigarette branding in movies. The movie producer thinks it's a great idea and says to him that he likes the idea of having cigarettes in space.
The lobbyist says, "but wouldn't cigarettes blow up in an all gravity environment."
The producer looks him square in the eye and says, "we can fix that with a few words of dialog, thank goodness we invented the..."
I had one of those moments tonight though I haven't yet gone back to correct it. I have my main characters plus about fifteen other people jumping out of Anthony's window to where the water is (it's less than a story down). Part of the way I increased the word count of this endeavor is that I made it so there were going to be people who couldn't swim who would need to be rescued. Where would they get put? Oh, on the fire escape of the building across the street.
This of course begs the question...
WHY THE HADES DIDN'T THE PEOPLE IN THE MC BUILDING JUST USE THE FIRE ESCAPE?
Well because that would have only taken six words of dialog to explain: "they climbed down the fire escape."
No, that would be far too simple and logical. I have to have them jumping out a third story window into almost three stories of water below. But now I do have to go back and insert the bits of dialog as to why the fire escape isn't there.
And you're damn skippy that will be more than three words.
---
I've come to the conclusion that I'm hoping that everyone over 25,000 words (with a few exceptions of course) have written nothing but crap.
Though really there's only one person that I wish this on truly. There's this one person on Team Toronto 2006 who's over 50,000 words. Ordinarily, even if they are on the opposing team, I'd have nothing but huzzahs for them. Except, this person has apparently wrote 39,000 of those words in the last two days.
And they're 13.
Now that seems a bit suspicious to me. Not that 13-year old can't write (I bet a lot of them are writing better novels than I am this year) but 13-year olds who write that fast have got to be kicking out just a bunch of crap.
I trust no one who writes more than 5,000 words a day. Doesn't matter the day. Any day of the 30 if you write more than 5,000, I don't trust you. Unless it's the last day and then I don't trust you either, but I do admire you.
How can I say this? Because I used to be one of "you people" and I don't trust myself. :)
Though maybe that's just the jealous talking.
I can't believe that two years ago I wrote 93,000 words in 30 days. Where the hades did that me go to? And they were 93,000 pretty good words to boot. This year, I'm on pace for 44,280 of the worst words I've ever written.
Unless I pull a rabbit out of my ass and come up with something interesting.
---
Though I do have to say that I found some bit of relief in an unlikely place, on the This Is Going Better Than I'd Hoped forum.
Yes, on that soul crusher of a group of discussions was one called, "How Many Words Did It Take You To Set Up Your Story? Or Will It Take You ...."
Some of the answers are downright shocking. There are people who have almost 30k of exposition. 30k or exposition! I thought 14.5k was bad. I bored myself with the characters all living in their own heads for that long (which is really only 40 pages in reality but it seems like a lot in NANOWRIMO time), I can only imagine what those people went through.
They must be really big "Seinfeld" fans.
Maybe I can convince them to read "Seinfeld Under Water."
I'm not sure if I remember correctly from last year's Wrimo Radio what the second week was supposed to be but apparently it's the week where novels start writing themselves as people have become familiar with the characters.
Well I'm very familiar with my characters in the same way that Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were familiar with theirs. If the five main characters in my novel were sitting at a diner in New York City, I could definitely have them discussing things with Beth, who has emerged as the main character (but who still has no last name) going, "did you ever notice?" and the other four, completely fleshed out, nodding their heads and saying the things that they should say based on the personalities I gave them.
Or maybe I can just be Jerry Seinfeld. "Did you ever notice how slightly bossy women with Napoleon complexes are actually really good at taking control in dangerous situations?"
I think everything is going according to plan because I never planned on having Beth become the leader of the group, it just made sense. Anthony is too neurotic and would be afraid of sticking his neck out. Allison is too shy. William is too much of a pretty boy and Brian is just not sane. Though I think Brian will redeem himself at some point by proving that he too can be helpful to get out of jams (after all, he is a survivalist).
Though I think the difference between me and seemingly everyone else who is past the halfway point is that they actually know how people will prove themselves.
Me, I'm just writing an episode of "Seinfeld" where the gang finds themselves in a burning building and Elaine develops organizational skills as opposed to just having a silly dance.
The irony? I never even liked "Seinfeld"!
---
One of my favorite lines in "Thank You For Smoking" is the one where the lobbyist is pitching the idea of more cigarette branding in movies. The movie producer thinks it's a great idea and says to him that he likes the idea of having cigarettes in space.
The lobbyist says, "but wouldn't cigarettes blow up in an all gravity environment."
The producer looks him square in the eye and says, "we can fix that with a few words of dialog, thank goodness we invented the..."
I had one of those moments tonight though I haven't yet gone back to correct it. I have my main characters plus about fifteen other people jumping out of Anthony's window to where the water is (it's less than a story down). Part of the way I increased the word count of this endeavor is that I made it so there were going to be people who couldn't swim who would need to be rescued. Where would they get put? Oh, on the fire escape of the building across the street.
This of course begs the question...
WHY THE HADES DIDN'T THE PEOPLE IN THE MC BUILDING JUST USE THE FIRE ESCAPE?
Well because that would have only taken six words of dialog to explain: "they climbed down the fire escape."
No, that would be far too simple and logical. I have to have them jumping out a third story window into almost three stories of water below. But now I do have to go back and insert the bits of dialog as to why the fire escape isn't there.
And you're damn skippy that will be more than three words.
---
I've come to the conclusion that I'm hoping that everyone over 25,000 words (with a few exceptions of course) have written nothing but crap.
Though really there's only one person that I wish this on truly. There's this one person on Team Toronto 2006 who's over 50,000 words. Ordinarily, even if they are on the opposing team, I'd have nothing but huzzahs for them. Except, this person has apparently wrote 39,000 of those words in the last two days.
And they're 13.
Now that seems a bit suspicious to me. Not that 13-year old can't write (I bet a lot of them are writing better novels than I am this year) but 13-year olds who write that fast have got to be kicking out just a bunch of crap.
I trust no one who writes more than 5,000 words a day. Doesn't matter the day. Any day of the 30 if you write more than 5,000, I don't trust you. Unless it's the last day and then I don't trust you either, but I do admire you.
How can I say this? Because I used to be one of "you people" and I don't trust myself. :)
Though maybe that's just the jealous talking.
I can't believe that two years ago I wrote 93,000 words in 30 days. Where the hades did that me go to? And they were 93,000 pretty good words to boot. This year, I'm on pace for 44,280 of the worst words I've ever written.
Unless I pull a rabbit out of my ass and come up with something interesting.
---
Though I do have to say that I found some bit of relief in an unlikely place, on the This Is Going Better Than I'd Hoped forum.
Yes, on that soul crusher of a group of discussions was one called, "How Many Words Did It Take You To Set Up Your Story? Or Will It Take You ...."
Some of the answers are downright shocking. There are people who have almost 30k of exposition. 30k or exposition! I thought 14.5k was bad. I bored myself with the characters all living in their own heads for that long (which is really only 40 pages in reality but it seems like a lot in NANOWRIMO time), I can only imagine what those people went through.
They must be really big "Seinfeld" fans.
Maybe I can convince them to read "Seinfeld Under Water."
posted by incendiarymind at 8:19 PM
1 Comments:
I think people who can churn out a whole lot of words in only a few days are pretty amazing--on the quantity aspect. But I do agree with you on the crap part. I did the 3-day novel thing during Labor Day Weekend and churned out 30k of dreck. There were some good ideas in there, but yeah, most of it was dreck and I'm not showing that stuff to anybody until I completely overhaul it.
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