Got Mashed Potatoes

It's done. Finally.

480 pages.
134,134 words.
187 hours composing.

About a month ago, I said I wouldn't post here again until Claims from the Pit was done. And thank God, it's done.

I remember doing very well on it the first year, then hitting a stumbling block. Not a writer's block, just a lack of motivation. Then I wrote stop-and-start for a long time, putting in a strong push in late 2005. I probably added less than 10 pages in the entire year of 2006. The whole time I felt guilty about not completing it. This is partially because I knew the ending the whole time. I just had to write to it (easier said than done, I found out). And then this year, the guilt caught up to me. I kept listening to this song that was about waking up. And so one night, the book woke back up. I edited for a week, and I liked what I saw, with some exception.

The first 100 pages are probably my best work to date. But then things don't quite go so smoothly for our narrator. And I don't know how readers will react to that. Not that there will be any readers. I love this book dearly. It is hard giving it up. But it alienates everyone. The whole premise of the book is that a sane person can make the decision to kill himself. And, yes dear readers, to ruin the ending -- he most certainly does.

Athenian: What of a man’s relations with himself – should he think of himself as his own enemy? What’s our answer now?

Cleinias: Well done, my Athenian friend! . . . . You have made the argument clearer by expressing it in its most elementary form. Now you will find it much easier to realize that the position we took up a moment ago is correct: not only is everyone an enemy of everyone else in the public sphere, but each man fights a private war against himself.

Athenian: You do surprise me, my friend. What do you mean?

Cleinias: This, sir, is where a man wins the first and best of victories – over himself. Conversely, to fall a victim to oneself is the worst and most shocking thing that can be imagined.

Plato, The Laws

There's plenty to bring readers in -- certain readers. There's more sex and violence in this book than the other two I wrote combined. It's meant to be very un-sexual, though. The titillation draws you in, but there's always a repercussion. That's an easy way to make a point, and I like working that way. Subtlety be damned! But I did work this strategy over and over in this book. The message is never stated, but perhaps too clear.

There's also so much happening in the book that I perhaps missed some things. It needs future drafts to better develop all that goes on. There is idealism confronting capitalism and drugs. There is friendship and language, which I need to develop more -- the idea how language changes over the course of a friendship. There's also plenty of Mormonism, nihilism, Henry Hudson, American Dream, relationship dynamics, suicide, bar life, and five different Beatles songs as world views thrown in for good measure. Adding to all that is a stream of consciousness voice meant to add some perspective and throw off the reader. Of my three manuscripts, this one is furthest from being publishable work . . . but it may say the most.

I found that it's difficult writing a dark book when things are going well for you. It's hard to 'turn off' and write to suit the novel. And to complete the book's premise, the build-up to the ending had to be just right -- I was really concerned with it coming off forced, just to end it the way I dreamed it. It needed to work and make some sort of sense.

Additionally, I can tie the writing and non-writing of the book to when my son entered the world. It is hella-hard to write after waking up a 9:AM, spending the morning watching the kid, and then working a full shift of work. It is much easier to come home and watch a move, play Railroad Tycoon 3, or watch the Internet.

With that said, these past four weeks -- about 85 hours of writing which accounted for approximately the final 87 pages of the novel -- has been so much more fulfilling than my other options. I think I'll take a month off, edit Claims, print it out and put it under my bed, and then start another.

...the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out...

The Book of Mormon

Jacob 7:26