Writing (AGODDAMNNOVEL) IS WAR

This is at once symbolic and long overdue. Figured it'd be a good time to update since I hit 200 pages today (YAAAAYYYYY). It's been a long summer of writing, joblessness and computer problems. I'm on my sister's old comp as of now which is way better than The General, an Acer Relic from 2001 with 128 MB of RAM....yeah that was painful. But on to something relevant. Novel Writing is War.

I mean writing a real novel, if you're being formulaic for the sake of money, or essentially jerking off onto paper, that's something different, but writing something you love and have faith in...is fucking war. What sucks the most is that you're fighting it from every imaginable perspective too. The General(overall story planning and plot development) The Strategist (detailed plot planning, character development and growth and how the two interact with the plot, continuity, being true to your characters) The Lieutenants,Sergeants and Captains in the field (Individual plot planning and how it relates/is relevant to the whole) And of course your Privates, and Corporals doing all the work on the ground. (THE FUCKING WRITING and everything that comes with it). Not to mention the war of attrition that is writing a prolonged piece in general...and lemme tell you, it's fucking hard. It's hard to get up every day and agonize over if this thought is true to the character, or if this scene is too long or the biggest fear of all...will anyone even CARE about the book. It's hard not to just throw it away and go back to tossin out short stories or flash fiction instead...but it can be worth it.

When you finish a really good scene and you can think about it in context of where it fits in the storyline and really see it stand out in your mind, and you feel that you've done a good job and you show some unbiased person and they say the same thing. That shit feels great, downright addictive. So to all my fellow novel writers, don't give up because it's hard, swallow your tears, clean off that blood and get back to fuckin work.

The past three chapters of my novel Publicity Tour (Chapters 6, 7, and 8) have been some of the most grueling things I've ever written in my fucking life. I've been writing since I was 13 and I've written a LOT but this idea is easily one of the most complex plots I've ever come up with. There are all kinds of twists and turns in the story itself as well as in the personal growth of the main character and they're inseparably intertwined; this is good for the book as a whole but complicated to write. If I were to ever get famous for this novel and someone wanted to see my notes, they would see the notes for a completely different story. Much like soldiers in the field, I've found that some of the initial ideas I came up with when writing the outline for the novel had to be changed when it came time to actually write the scenes, so I had to adapt on the fly, completely altering character motivations, how certain scenes played out, adding subplots...it's been a wild and fun ride and it's only half over.

I've intentionally broken some of the rules of writing I've been taught at Columbia in certain scenes because I feel like it HELPS...but at the same time I've used a lot of what I've learned as well. Combining plots that weaves together the story and the character development almost seamlessly is something I learned in Pop Fiction, really getting that emotion into is something I learned in Prose Forms, and not writing awful parodies is something I learned in Fiction 2 (a joke for columbia fiction majors only). But above all I'm really leaning about my process, this is my first novel undertaking and since I hate people who take for fucking ever to write one novel (no matter how good it is) I really want it done quickly while still putting out the best work possible (which I seem capable of somehow...think it's all that meth my brain seems to produce). My process is simple...come up with an idea, fuck with it until you like it...lay down the foundation...then us some sort of physics gun to completely alter the molecules of said foundation into that of a living creature and continue to fuck with it until I have something completely different but still awesome. I started out with a house and now I have a tree...that is also a house. That's how I've been writing and I fucking love it.

My biggest hurdle so far in writing this book was catching myself. Okay that needs some context. There are two big villains over the course of the novel, and figuring out HOW to catch the first one nearly drove my ass crazy. That was Chapter 6 and 7, because not only were the characters trying to catch a badguy, they were also trying to prove ANOTHER guy was innocent WHILE fending off a higher-up who was trying to take credit for their work which was all pretty complicated, almost mind bogglingly so. Everyone who knows me heard me bitch, well bitch more than usual anyways. But in the end I LOVE the result and hopefully you reader people will to...when it's done...eventually.

But yeah man, this noveling shit isn't easy, not that I expected it to be. But I love it, I love writing and this is the biggest challenge I've ever had and I'm taking it headon. Keep reading and keep writing.

(P.S.: I'm going to try and update more I swear)

(P.P.S.:Seriously)