Good is not fast is not better

http://www.slate.com/id/2301243/

This post reminds me, sadly or not-so-sadly, of the time my dad decided to try his hand at writing something. This, from a man who'd never written anything before in his life. Who rarely read anything, near as I can tell, either. Or rather, he read a lot, but not for a feeling of style and organization. And did I mention he's absolutely nuts?

Now, a lot of people say that about their parents: they're nuts. But sanity and insanity are relative, and what scales you use for one are inapplicable for the other. It makes an interesting frame-of-reference debate, the sort where, like Newton and his bucket of water, you ask which one is spinning. Only there is no absolute space.

Anyway, he churned out a 91,000-page manuscript in about a month, which is awesome. That some of the facts didn't compute, the language was atrocious, the points obtuse, and the general gist of the book didn't seem to make any sense...less awesome.

You can't make this stuff up: when I asked him why he didn't want me to seriously edit the damn thing and make it understandable, he said, "Because nobody can understand it."

Writing beyond the block

I'm working on a very complicated novel involving twin brothers, the end of the US, telepathy, and a gun named "Coraline". So far there has been a helicopter, a wedding, and lots of repressed anger.

Like the NaNoWriMo I wrote last year, I started this only after I worked out how it ends (not prettily). But unlike NaNoWriMo, it's been slow and painstaking and the characters end up in situations that I hadn't planned and things happen and the parts that I thought I would linger on barely get mentioned, while blood and gore (well, gore) cover the pages. I've also been getting hung up on every other page with scenes that won't work, and obssessing about them until they do.

It is quite possibly my most favorite--and my most pain-in-the-ass story. Kind of like the Tweeb.