Friday, January 12, 2007

The Rest is Silence, i.e., Rewrite

Oh, I should have mentioned that I finished my novel yesterday, the one that has nothing to do with Whooping Jesus Bible College's "sunny clime/Where I used to spend my time/A fightin' for her majesty the Queen."

No, any similarities to that sad place are not just coincidental: They are impossible. It's a fact. Nothing at all alike.

Anyway, I promised myself I would finish it during semester break, and I have, in kind of a wild rush to conclusion, featuring many short sentences and perhaps a little Dickensian summation. The final scene had my hero walking down a road, so I just made the road longer and had him bump into several other characters going in the opposite direction on various plot-driven errands and, as sympathetic perhaps to the point of cipher that my hero is, well, they stopped to share ....

I'll admit this sounds like a bad allegory or a fever dream, but I will settle for fever dream. If I can achieve that effect, I will rest content. You know: Kafka Meets Abbott and Costello.

I would gladly settle for that.

And, yes, I know the chances of its making its way into print are miniscule. That is no longer the point. That was no longer the point for a long time. It was all just a kind of computer game, a Sim City thing, with the screen inside my head.

3 comments:

david silver said...

what?!? awesome!

what's the novel's title?

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Two problems: the ending, even though it has come to a halt, and the title. I figure if I solve the problem with the ending -- and all the other problems -- then some kind person will *suggest* a title.

In other words, that will be the last problem, and if it get to the last problem: No problem!

B. Wieder said...

Congratulations! You must bring your unpublished novel over some time for a play date with my three...or is it four?...unpublished novels, even though they are now somewhat older than Eric Chavez.
And re your comment on my latest posting, a clue to the three-letter word in question may be discerned by looking at the title of the posting, specifically between the quotation marks.