benchilada (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
benchilada) wrote2004-11-08 10:46 pm
benchilada) wrote2004-11-08 10:46 pm
NANOWRIMO, Part II
…but Sara and my brain are both wondering if NANOWRIMO is taking time away from real polishing I could be doing on short stories that I’ve finished, or nearly finished, and might actually have a chance of selling.
How much do I *need* to write a fifty-thousand page novel in thirty days, and how much do I need to focus on the work that I can honestly say I have a chance of selling?
I need some input here, people. 47,500 words in 22 words is a bigassfucking time commitment. Should I be focusing some of this energy on stuff I can actually manipulate into money, like RECEIVER and COURTHOUSE HO’S?
Fuck, gimme some input, and here’s PART TWO:
“You can put down the gun, you know, I’m not planning on taking my hand off this rod anytime soon.”
“How very suggestive of you, Champ.”
His smile didn’t move. This was gonna be a trick.
“So, I’m gonna break the traditional spy vs. villain moment, if that’s okay, and spill the beans about why I’m doing this, sound good?”
“Again, you’re making assumptions about who’s the villain in this room.”
“Hey, I only called myself a spy; I didn’t say villain wouldn’t fit, too.”
“Fair enough.”
“Well…here goes, and let it not be said that you didn’t ask,” I roll my eyes as I start talking. “I tell stories best by example, if that’s okay with you. Okay, let’s start about twenty-eight hundred B.C., if you don’t mind. That’s when we first established a written language. The Sumerians did it, as I’m sure a smart man like you already knows.”
“Cuneiform. Looked like Mutant Trivial pursuit pieces.”
“You got it, Tiger. So, here we are, we’re Sumerians and we’ve just invented writing. It takes off, and pretty soon, it’s spreading everywhere.” I splay my hands and gesture widely. Both of his hands tighten noticeably.
“Sorry, Buddy, I talk with my hands. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m on my knees in front of you and you’re holding two dangerous phallic symbols in your hands. If anybody’s getting fucked here, it’s me and my big mouth.”
“Superspy, what a big mouth you have.”
“All the better to eat you with, Guy. Right,” I declare, pointing my fingers at him and tracing vague shapes in the air, “we’ve just gotten written language spread around the world. Before that, tens of thousands of years of oral communication. So how long until we actually automate the shit? Four and a half thousand years later,” I scream, my hands flapping in the air like spastic pigeons.
“Round about the 1450’s, Johannes Gutenberg invents moveable type. Sounds good, yeah? More books for everybody. Well, for the rich only, at first, and mostly about how God is Great.”
“But,” I continue, “we’re not happy yet. No sirree. We need to be able to do this without stupid quills that we need to dip in inkwells over and over and over. Comes the typewriter. First one that actually sold for a damn was made in Denmark, 1870. Fourteen years later we get a similar innovation, when Mr. Waterman invents the fountain pen. Noticing a trend here?”
“Only that I feel like I should be taking notes,” he grinned, “and that there’ll be a quiz when you’ve finished.”
“Near enough, Guy. So where was I?”
“Waterman,”
“Right, the fountain pen! So, we’ve got forty-five hundred years, then about four hundred or four-thirty until the next major steps, right? What’s next? Well, somewhere around the 1920’s somebody realizes we haven’t shot any electricity through the typewriter, and by the fifties we’ve got thousands of the humming, vibrating machines in offices and homes around the world. “That’s what, fifty years? And by 1978 two companies have simultaneously invented the ‘electronic’ typewriter, which can store words so you can correct your all-too-human mistakes before they get pounded out onto the paper. So, let’s call it twenty-eight years.”
“Let me guess, next is the Lisa? Or maybe just MS-DOS? You’re boring me, Superspy. I liked you better when you were killing people.”
“I’ll speed this up. Let’s, for the sake of argument, call it 1987, right?” I ask, my fingers tracing the numbers in mid-air, “That’s when Aldus PageMaker came out, and later that year came Windows 2.0. Nine years, Tiger. And, for personal preference, I’ll call the following year…”
“Okay, seriously, shut up. I get the point. Our points of innovation are becoming exponentially shorter. Like Xeno’s paradox, where you can’t really touch anything, technically, because at some point your finger has passed the halfway point between the starting point and where you’re aiming for. And then at some point it hits the halfway point between the first halfway point and the finish. Repeat infinitely, unless…”
“Unless there’s such a thing as the smallest possible particle, which cannot be cut in half, so eventually the ones of your finger,” I accent by waving mine around, “reach the ones of what you’re touching. Like an oak desk,”
“Touch the desk and you’re a dead man.”
“We’re all dead men, Slugger. We all die with unresolved issues, the same problems we have when we’re alive. The only difference between alive and dead, the only thing that let’s my finger touch the oak, is that at some point air ends…” I pause, taking a deep breath, “…and magic begins.”
Exhaling mightily, I empty my lungs across the entire area where I’ve been gesticulating like a madman. Golden trails burn in front of me, and as I blow, the cords and lines undulate and tighten until I’ve got the image I wanted.
“Set your pistol down for a second, and see if this,” I point at the glowing image of the palm of a hand, lines and all, that hovers between the two of us, “doesn’t match yours exactly.”
He pauses for a moment, clumsily passes his gun to the hand holding the metal rod and checks it against my diagram. For the first time since I walked through the new hole I call his doorway, his smile flickers for a moment before snapping back into shape.
“So,” I grin, dramatically drawing my hands across the shining hand like Vanna White revealing a fresh new Quotation, “do mind if I read your palm?”
I mean, this exercise is all well and good, but…
Oh, and with luck, benchilada.net will be up in some vague form this week. Watch that space…
benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois, 9:45pm
CURRENT MUSIC: “Situation,” by YAZ
LAST MOVIE: Still PRINCESS BRIDE
LAST BOOK I READ ANYTHING OUT OF: The Practice of Palmistry, by Comte C. de Saint-Germain, A.B, LL.M., 1897, (1970 reprint)
---------
My hypershort fictions and non-fiction commentaries go to http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/compositemolecules
and http://benchilada.livejournal.com
---------
Flickr photostream of my bizarre photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchilada/
How much do I *need* to write a fifty-thousand page novel in thirty days, and how much do I need to focus on the work that I can honestly say I have a chance of selling?
I need some input here, people. 47,500 words in 22 words is a bigassfucking time commitment. Should I be focusing some of this energy on stuff I can actually manipulate into money, like RECEIVER and COURTHOUSE HO’S?
Fuck, gimme some input, and here’s PART TWO:
“You can put down the gun, you know, I’m not planning on taking my hand off this rod anytime soon.”
“How very suggestive of you, Champ.”
His smile didn’t move. This was gonna be a trick.
“So, I’m gonna break the traditional spy vs. villain moment, if that’s okay, and spill the beans about why I’m doing this, sound good?”
“Again, you’re making assumptions about who’s the villain in this room.”
“Hey, I only called myself a spy; I didn’t say villain wouldn’t fit, too.”
“Fair enough.”
“Well…here goes, and let it not be said that you didn’t ask,” I roll my eyes as I start talking. “I tell stories best by example, if that’s okay with you. Okay, let’s start about twenty-eight hundred B.C., if you don’t mind. That’s when we first established a written language. The Sumerians did it, as I’m sure a smart man like you already knows.”
“Cuneiform. Looked like Mutant Trivial pursuit pieces.”
“You got it, Tiger. So, here we are, we’re Sumerians and we’ve just invented writing. It takes off, and pretty soon, it’s spreading everywhere.” I splay my hands and gesture widely. Both of his hands tighten noticeably.
“Sorry, Buddy, I talk with my hands. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m on my knees in front of you and you’re holding two dangerous phallic symbols in your hands. If anybody’s getting fucked here, it’s me and my big mouth.”
“Superspy, what a big mouth you have.”
“All the better to eat you with, Guy. Right,” I declare, pointing my fingers at him and tracing vague shapes in the air, “we’ve just gotten written language spread around the world. Before that, tens of thousands of years of oral communication. So how long until we actually automate the shit? Four and a half thousand years later,” I scream, my hands flapping in the air like spastic pigeons.
“Round about the 1450’s, Johannes Gutenberg invents moveable type. Sounds good, yeah? More books for everybody. Well, for the rich only, at first, and mostly about how God is Great.”
“But,” I continue, “we’re not happy yet. No sirree. We need to be able to do this without stupid quills that we need to dip in inkwells over and over and over. Comes the typewriter. First one that actually sold for a damn was made in Denmark, 1870. Fourteen years later we get a similar innovation, when Mr. Waterman invents the fountain pen. Noticing a trend here?”
“Only that I feel like I should be taking notes,” he grinned, “and that there’ll be a quiz when you’ve finished.”
“Near enough, Guy. So where was I?”
“Waterman,”
“Right, the fountain pen! So, we’ve got forty-five hundred years, then about four hundred or four-thirty until the next major steps, right? What’s next? Well, somewhere around the 1920’s somebody realizes we haven’t shot any electricity through the typewriter, and by the fifties we’ve got thousands of the humming, vibrating machines in offices and homes around the world. “That’s what, fifty years? And by 1978 two companies have simultaneously invented the ‘electronic’ typewriter, which can store words so you can correct your all-too-human mistakes before they get pounded out onto the paper. So, let’s call it twenty-eight years.”
“Let me guess, next is the Lisa? Or maybe just MS-DOS? You’re boring me, Superspy. I liked you better when you were killing people.”
“I’ll speed this up. Let’s, for the sake of argument, call it 1987, right?” I ask, my fingers tracing the numbers in mid-air, “That’s when Aldus PageMaker came out, and later that year came Windows 2.0. Nine years, Tiger. And, for personal preference, I’ll call the following year…”
“Okay, seriously, shut up. I get the point. Our points of innovation are becoming exponentially shorter. Like Xeno’s paradox, where you can’t really touch anything, technically, because at some point your finger has passed the halfway point between the starting point and where you’re aiming for. And then at some point it hits the halfway point between the first halfway point and the finish. Repeat infinitely, unless…”
“Unless there’s such a thing as the smallest possible particle, which cannot be cut in half, so eventually the ones of your finger,” I accent by waving mine around, “reach the ones of what you’re touching. Like an oak desk,”
“Touch the desk and you’re a dead man.”
“We’re all dead men, Slugger. We all die with unresolved issues, the same problems we have when we’re alive. The only difference between alive and dead, the only thing that let’s my finger touch the oak, is that at some point air ends…” I pause, taking a deep breath, “…and magic begins.”
Exhaling mightily, I empty my lungs across the entire area where I’ve been gesticulating like a madman. Golden trails burn in front of me, and as I blow, the cords and lines undulate and tighten until I’ve got the image I wanted.
“Set your pistol down for a second, and see if this,” I point at the glowing image of the palm of a hand, lines and all, that hovers between the two of us, “doesn’t match yours exactly.”
He pauses for a moment, clumsily passes his gun to the hand holding the metal rod and checks it against my diagram. For the first time since I walked through the new hole I call his doorway, his smile flickers for a moment before snapping back into shape.
“So,” I grin, dramatically drawing my hands across the shining hand like Vanna White revealing a fresh new Quotation, “do mind if I read your palm?”
I mean, this exercise is all well and good, but…
Oh, and with luck, benchilada.net will be up in some vague form this week. Watch that space…
benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois, 9:45pm
CURRENT MUSIC: “Situation,” by YAZ
LAST MOVIE: Still PRINCESS BRIDE
LAST BOOK I READ ANYTHING OUT OF: The Practice of Palmistry, by Comte C. de Saint-Germain, A.B, LL.M., 1897, (1970 reprint)
---------
My hypershort fictions and non-fiction commentaries go to http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/compositemolecules
and http://benchilada.livejournal.com
---------
Flickr photostream of my bizarre photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchilada/