My Novel

In an effort to live up to the mission statement of G:TB, I am going to take myself less seriously. I am going to stop dreaming, stop aiming so high, and just give up . . . and it feels good, this giving up. Those that know me will demand more information. What exactly are you giving up on, they will ask. Let me be more specific. I am certainly not giving up on my dream to record a concept album about the 19th century caviar industry in New Jersey. That's on hold, but I'm not giving up. I'm sure there will be a resurgence in people's interest in sturgeon. I am also not giving up on my dream to build an enclosed electric recumbent bike. Not that I've gotten beyond the stage of Googling pictures, but still, it is alive. And one of these days I'm going to melt plastic toys into outsider modern art and make my fortune. I also still might try to set the record for consecutively juggling a soccer ball. Seriously.

The dream I am going to give up on is my dream to write a novel. I've written outlines, scenes, loads of dialogue, descriptions, anecdotes, but nothing even close to resembling a chapter. I suppose the closest I got was when Whitney and I pumped out three mediocre screenplays, but a screenplay is not a novel. A screenplay has a set format, and the writing is closer to journalism than art.

I actually gave up on this dream several months ago, but I decided to address my lack of fictional productivity in the form of a song. A song about how I needed to get to work on my novel but never would. Why not? Why won't I ever write a masterpiece of fiction? Because I can't type. Even writing a blog post this long is stretching the limits of my pecking ability (although seeing Slovenian super-brain Slavoj Zizek's one fingered typing style made me realize that where there is a will there's a way). There is also the fact that I don't have much insight or perspective on how other people's brain's work, but that hasn't stopped many prolific novelists from churning out loads of fiction.


So in the middle of recording this song about procrastination (which I've posted today!) my computer broke. Because of this, the song took several months to record. The irony is not lost on me. In the midst of fixing the computer, I decided that this electronic recording project was insane, time consuming, impossible, for computer geeks, and overly frustrating. But all that changed when I realized I wasn't actually insane. It wasn't my IRQ line or some sort of Vista based glitch (though people would have me believe otherwise) and the software wasn't beyond me, it was just that my video card was broken.

In the months it took to diagnose this rather simple hardware failure-- and again, the irony is not lost on me-- I came up with a great idea for a novel. This was the novel I would actually write . . . it would be dark, satirical, and picaresque, so I wouldn't have to worry much about a plot. The premise was a simple reversal of an archetype; instead of the typical apocalyptic story, such as The Road or I am Legend or Mad Max or Escape from New York, where the lone heroic man, in a terrible world stricken by disaster, must carve out both a new life and a new persona, one rougher and stronger and wilder than what he once was when he was civilized.



Instead of that fantasy, this would be a story of a henpecked husband and his wife and mother-in-law and his three manipulative daughters and how they ALL survive the apocalyptic event, and so our lone hero, instead of being freed of civilization, which is the man's dream, to wander the earth with a cool car like Mad Max and cool sunglasses like Kurt Russell, instead he has to perform the same marital and filial and social duties as usual, but in the apocalypse. I planned on calling it The Rut. It would make for lots of good situation comedy and satire in a dark setting. I bought The Stand and The World Without Us, and I was all ready to move into my next stage of novelistic procrastination, which is basically planning to read, but not reading a bunch of books that vaguely have to do with the theme of the novel. And once again, I forgot the main reason I will never write a novel. I can't type! Not only can't I do it, but I hate and despise it. And-- although I try not to be homophobic-- I find typing kind of feminine. If I ever do get in the groove on the keyboard, I feel like I need to take a break to do some push-ups and then have a beer. In fact, I'm doing push-ups and drinking beer right now.

And so I finally think I have learned my lesson. Whenever I have an idea for a novel, I'm going to take myself less seriously, and I'm going to post my idea on Gheorghe. For anyone to use. Perhaps Whitney will type it up in a few minutes as a seventeen page post. And I am going to concentrate on making bad music on my computer, which is one of my dreams, and one I've been quite successful at. So, without further typing, here is the new Greasetruck song, entitled: "My Novel." It is a return to form: I barely sing, I abuse the pitch shifter, there's lots of weird sounds floating around (some with purpose and some accidental) and there is a monologue, which I was trying to get away from, but since Whitney loves them, and since I'm never going to write a novel, there's got to be some way for me to present my prose other than this blog.

Now playing: Greasetruck

It's time, I’ve got to write my novel
Sit down and get it done soon.
That’s right, I've got to start typing.
Sequester myself in a little room--
cause we’re gonna die soon

But I got so much to do--
I need to type up chapter two.
And I never wrote chapter one,
I'll do that one when I’m done.
But you’ve got to hear my plot.
Plot is the thing I’ve got.
There’s a lady on the run,
And there’s a man with a gun,
And when it gets a little slow
Then I’ve got a UFO.

I've got to sit down and type my story
it’s the story of . . . the story of life--
it’s the story of life in the future,
everybody’s got an android wife.

But you've got to hear my plot, plot is what I got.
Now creature from outer space joins in on the chase,
and when it's all said and done
you'll never guess who shoots the gun.
I can’t say the final twist . . . okay, if you insist:
the lady wakes up from a dream, nothing is as it seems,
but who’s beside her in her bed?
That space creature from her head.
What's the moral of my tale? Love will prevail.

Monologue

I've got to write a song about writing my novel.
Yeah, I've got to sing that song soon.
Got to sing that song about writing my novel.
Yeah, I've got to get it sung soon.

You've got to hear my song,
it's only two minutes long.
Unless i sing some more,
then I could make it four.
It's got a meta plot,
and so I better stop.
People hate a meta plot.