National Novel Writing Month - Page 3

Ophiel · #41 11-07-2008, 06:08 AM

I structure obsessively, like, to a horrific degree of analness (anality?) that prevents me from writing anything normally. To this end, I'm going to base Ramon's life story on what I managed to pick up from the Wikipeia article about Chinese medicine.

Structure 1
Ramon's Birth - 10,000 words
Ramon as a boy - 10,000 words
Ramon as an adult - 10,000 words
Ramon as an old man - 10,000 words
Ramon's Death - 10,000 words

Structure 2
Ramon's Birth - 1,000 words
Ramon as a boy - 1,000 words
Ramon as an adult - 1,000 words
Ramon as an old man - 1,000 words
Ramon's Birth - 46,000 words

50,000 words shouldn't be that much trouble, tbh. I wrote a 12,000 word dissertation in two weeks, and that had to be good. I roughed out a plan and got 80-120,000 words, so I'm sure this is doable. I think even if I miss the deadline, I might still have a shot at getting the thing published.

bort · #42 11-07-2008, 06:11 AM

Both, back-to-back, in the same novel. PoMo! First from your clinical point of view, and then from Ramon's own point of view, hence the unbalanced nature of his life's stages. I mean, you have a setting and everything. Mine is all so amorphous and poorly defined and described.

kesh · #43 11-07-2008, 06:25 AM

you really need to start with the first jewish conquistadores' arrival in central america and continue from there

bort · #44 11-07-2008, 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kesh

you really need to start with the first jewish conquistadores' arrival in central america and continue from there

I think that needs to be an appendix. The "key facts to help us understand Ramon" section.

Amity · #45 11-07-2008, 06:34 AM

Kittyradio NaNoWriMo

Can I do mine in free verse? Is there a word count?

Ophiel · #46 11-07-2008, 06:43 AM

Expanded strucutre

Ramon's Birth
Impregnation of Ramon's mother by many drunken Jesuits - 2000 words
Ramon's birth into a disgusting world - 2000 words
Ramon's parents argue over his paternity - 2000 words
The paternity test - 2000 words
Ramon is fished out of a roadside dumpster and returned to his parents - 2000 words

Ramon as a boy
Ramon's first day at school - 2000 words
Ramon's visitation by Norma J - 2000 words
Ramon deals with the school bullies with tact, poise and restraint - 2000 words
Ramon is molested repeatedly by authority figures - 2000 words
Ramon is sold by his parents to a fashion magnate - 2000 words

Ramon as an adult
Ramon's life in the fashion industry - 2000 words
Ramon debuts onto the Panama gay scene - 2000 words
Ramon travels to Europe, to meet "real people" - 2000 words
An account of Ramon's life in the sewers of Paris - 2000 words
Ramon is bought from sewer-dwelling beggars by an American businessman - 2000 words
Ramon's adventures in the Deep South - 2000 words

Ramon as an old man
Ramon settles in Michapoga, Colorado - 2000 words
Ramon's adventures with a busful of hippies, following his exile from Michapoga, Colorado - 2000 words
Ramon is abandoned in the desert - 2000 words
Ramon's encounter with a family of sadistic cannibals - 2000 words

Ramon's Death
Ramon's long lingering death, in extensive detail - 2000 words
Ramon in purgatory - 2000 words
Ramon, briefly, in Heaven - 2000 words
Ramon, eternally, in Hell - 2000 words
The conclusion: Ramon's whole life has been a womb-dream cut short by Norma J's questing wire coathanger - 2000 words.

Poifect! It's basically Candide with a happy ending.

bort · #47 11-07-2008, 06:53 AM

I'm thinking, after looking at that, that if I sat down for ten minutes and planned my novel it would actually be a lot easier/even easier to write. But I'm going with my virtual stream-of-consciousness shit at the moment. I started it, and I think I'll finish.

The thought crossed my mind that I could throw in some postmodern bullshit fucking with the layout, like an entire page of the same word or something, and I could claim I'm being experimental when really I'm just trying to eat up the word count. Bloody tempting though...

Ophiel · #48 11-07-2008, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bort

I'm thinking, after looking at that, that if I sat down for ten minutes and planned my novel it would actually be a lot easier/even easier to write. But I'm going with my virtual stream-of-consciousness shit at the moment. I started it, and I think I'll finish.

The thought crossed my mind that I could throw in some postmodern bullshit fucking with the layout, like an entire page of the same word or something, and I could claim I'm being experimental when really I'm just trying to eat up the word count. Bloody tempting though...

I'd be very surprised if no-one else tried this, and I'd imagine they probably check for it.

But yeah, breaking up big word counts into small ones is seriously worth doing. I learned this from the dissertation. 10,000 words is scary as shit until you realise that it's actually just five lots of 2000 words, or 10 lots of 1000. 10,000 = scary, 1,000 = do it on the bus in on the way in the morning you have to hand it in.

So I dunno, if you're going for the pomo angle, I'd say just make a list of things you want to write about, divide the remaining word count by the number of things, and get yourself a time plan sorted. You can flip a coin or roll a dice to decide which character is present (if any) if you're bothered about it seeming like it's even supposed to make sense.

Seriously man, this is exactly how things like Ulysses got written. My grandead always used to say "How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time!"

(You can probably use that. The guy wrote a book but no-one will have read it.)

bort · #49 11-07-2008, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ophiel

But yeah, breaking up big word counts into small ones is seriously worth doing. I learned this from the dissertation. 10,000 words is scary as shit until you realise that it's actually just five lots of 2000 words, or 10 lots of 1000. 10,000 = scary, 1,000 = do it on the bus in on the way in the morning you have to hand it in.

So I dunno, if you're going for the pomo angle, I'd say just make a list of things you want to write about, divide the remaining word count by the number of things, and get yourself a time plan sorted. You can flip a coin or roll a dice to decide which character is present (if any) if you're bothered about it seeming like it's even supposed to make sense.

Seriously man, this is exactly how things like Ulysses got written. My grandead always used to say "How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time!"

(You can probably use that. The guy wrote a book but no-one will have read it.)

I'm going to start planning my grand magic realist epic for next year this way. At first thought I thought it was overly prescriptive, but of course you're not beholden to the word counts, and it's the way forward. I could yet be Dick "do you like my new direction?" Francis.

At least the time won't be a problem for me this time, only the inspiration. Count-wise, I'm going great guns. My protagonist fell asleep on a school field and has just been kicked awake by a schoolboy coming in early.

Ophiel · #50 11-07-2008, 07:46 AM

Nah, dude, you need a time limit. Let us know when you've started it, and KR will make sure you get it done within a month/six weeks. It's good to have a time frame and know how much you want to write, even if you do then break your own rules.

sssh · #51 11-07-2008, 10:51 AM

I don't think this thread is going anywhere. There is too much talk of structure now. I want to see kesh's novel

kesh · #52 11-07-2008, 12:13 PM

i'm not writing one.

if i was i wouldn't do it this way

sssh · #53 11-07-2008, 12:20 PM

I hope it didn't look like I was implying you would, I think it's a terrible way to write a novel (see my earlier post).

I've written 500 words today! But of my Marx essay. Only another 1000 to go, but that's ok, I've got quite a bit to say plus a conclusion. I think it's probably a load of rubbish and to make it worse, the guy who's marking it thinks I'm clever and told me he's looking forward to reading it. Thanks mr, way to paralyse me with your expectations and set yourself up for inevitable disappointment

kr is such a distraction, even though posts are moving like ducks through a river of treacle today

Ophiel · #54 11-07-2008, 12:35 PM

Quote:

I hope it didn't look like I was implying you would, I think it's a terrible way to write a novel (see my earlier post).

I don't know, I think it's a good way to discipline yourself into writing if you already have a solid idea, but if you're literally just going to churn out vomit-writing every day for 30 days, then yeah, that's a lameosaurus.

Ophiel · #55 11-07-2008, 01:14 PM

OK, chapter one:

Here, vilely mis-en-scened by dull grey moonlight, the lurid rose hum of neon enticements to prayer in the houses of Bacchus and Venus, washes of shapeless sodium vomit gaseous and quietly choking;

here in the sickening thud and twitter of protogenic dance music, the vile bodies of the Art of Noise and Status Quo, between the cubist cheets of cold uncaring brickwork and piss-streaked alleyways streets, anti-tributaries to the urban rivers of contraflow and latenight glass-strewn gutterways;

here in this dark imperium, just as every night since her honeymoon, Mrs Jamie Eleanor-Mercet has stepped out on her dotingly ineffectual husband Jason, onto the unaudienced catwalk of these streets of Panama City, and having made on flawless circuit, now finds herself coiled in a black feather boa but otherwise naked as an over-made-up jaybird, streaked with body-glitter-hemmed rivulets of guiltless tears, having parts of herself worked steadily loose by - on this occasion - the middle-aged Jesuit propped up against her. His sparsely furred thighs, exposed by the descent of ill-fitting anthracite pinstripes down his short, slightly bandy legs, not by intent but by force of vibration, slap thick sullen slaps against Mrs Mercet's broad, dimpled buttocks. With each slap, these gellid masses quiver repulsively and unevenly, sending little tremors out from this epicentre up through her cross-eyed drooping dugs, up through his unattractively forested paunch and just-noticeably-sagging nipples, the coital shockwave eventually reaching larynx and vocal chords, but depleting sufficiently in magnitude in its passage though the ugly medium of the twin twained flesh to produce only pathetic, inexpressive grunts, uhs and yesses.

In spite of this lack of obvious passion, Mrs Mercet's mumbled affirmations are genuine, this muted thudding of semi-engorged erectile flesh against a fully-engorged but barely sensate cervix (not at great remove in nature from the wet, heavy black sack of mixed garbage that shifts beneath her lower back) was exactly, or at least as exactly as necessary, what she had had in mind.

The smothering, overwrought emotionality of her husband, a short, ribby, pallid Roman Catholic who misted over during their occasional maudlin sagas of sexual disappointment and frustration, sickened her, and through their long, family-led courtship-of-convenience right up until their damp, lacklustre wedding ceremony, a little brainstorm of resentment had brewed within her towards any physical intimacy that came with a taint of fondness or feeling.

This had finally manifested itself within hours of her marriage, at the two mother-in-laws' desperate attempt at a grandiose reception, when the newly "Mrs" Mercet had traded five minutes of brutal pelvic slams and mocking arseslaps bent over a lavender enamel washbasin by a Jheri-curled just-post-adolescent member of the hotel's catering staff in exchange for a cigarette.

From this moment on, Jamie was hooked. Every infraction of fidelity against her husband transported her bak to that black consummation of her adulterous desires, to that rapture of joyful debasement, of being mounted with such vigour and fucked with such contempt as little more than a trophy, as an anecdotal brag for her erstwhile screwer to later relate in only-slightly exaggerated detail to a pack of awed college mates at the pub some nights later.

And the more her choice of mate would impotently enrage her feeble spouse and her revolting mother-in-law were they to discover him well and truly inside her, the more intense the thrill became. Knowing that she was choosing them on such a callous basis further cheapened the experience, and thus complemented the act for her. And since the man had been raised very much in that foully upstanding crone's near-fascistic image (right down to the thin mousy analogue of a Hitler moustache), there were few obstructions to the location of partners that he could find offensive whether they were helping to violate the sanctity of his marriage or not.

It was to this end that the awkward, unnervingly goggled-eyed Jew, in most respects the very model of his creed's long-standing caricature as found in the iconography of pre-WWII propaganda , had been singled out from a listless congregation of equally uninspiring teen-to-middle-aged males in a sterile, reassuringly generic half-full bar little more than a quarter of a mile from the Mercet home, at the rear of which they now without ceremony fucked in the unforgiving glow of streetlights. Jamie's clothes lay slumped in a heap on the floor, a puddle of garish red piss below the jesuit's pendulous jiggling balls, summitted by her favourite "stick-it-in-me" shoes, the ones with the perpetually broken heel and the tiniest splat of vomit placed just so, noticeable-but-not, all marvelously concatenated to remind the prospective "client" that every bit of this staggering, stumbling scarecrow of gin-and-brandy-soaked noise and smeared mascara, with its too-loud throaty guffaws, occasional pink cowboy hat and Epilady-hacked calves, was genuine; that it was a gettable as it was apparently gotten, that it would not be too bothered where the fuck happened, that it would not change its mind, and that they could believe their luck because there was clearly a fair amount of room for improvement that was being left very much vacant.

Jamie loved that, the little moment of uncertainty as a prospective screw wondered what the catch was, and the little eternity of cocksure elation when they realised that there really wasn't one.

Feeling the bland, barely-varying thud of her temporary partner's groin into the cruel stygia between her brown-blotched thighs, its indifference, she reveled in the Jew's fear, even at this late stage, that she might change her mind. He seemed panicky, worried even, although apparently at the upper limit of his capacity to finish himself off any quicker, unable to stroke harder, faster or deeper, and as he screwed his bulbous green eyes tight shut below that furrowed brow and began to let out a long tremulant wail, she arched her back against the angular bed of plastic-gagged beer bottles as the knowledge that he was having to think about someone else, to block her prostrate form both from his field of vision and from his mind, in order to finish. Truly, she was vile! "Guess what, honey? Last night, I snuck out to a bar with the red dress on - you know the one, I wore it to your parents' ruby wedding? - and I picked up a bulbous nosed Jews about ten years your senior and had him fuck the living shit out of my cunt on a pile of bin bags in a back alley, and do you know what else? He didn't even enjoy it! Isn't that great?!"

In this oceanic rapture of spite-fueled ecstasy, the cold eellishness of her bodily orgasm registered little more than that of her punter. The dull splatter onto the concrete below them roused her somewhat from her reverie, but by the time she became fully cognizant again of her pitiful surroundings, the Jew had long gone, scampering away half-bent L-shaped under a cloud of gloomy self-loathing to find some other nearby alley, away from her, in which to attempt to regain his dignity while quietly being sick.

Champers · #56 11-07-2008, 02:35 PM

^ *subscribes as a result*

This is the best read I have had in AGES, keep going ...

bort · #57 11-07-2008, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sssh

I hope it didn't look like I was implying you would, I think it's a terrible way to write a novel (see my earlier post).

I think it's a good way to write a novel, but a terrible way to write a good novel. So I'm just aiming to finish, which I suppose is the whole point. I've never written this much in my life, so I can't complain really. It clearly works for jolting me out of my inability to get something down in writing, and if it can somehow embolden me, I may start work on a decent novel once this one is over. I'm proud of myself.