Mark's Misfires

50,000 words? In 30 days? No problem.

2009-11-29T18:16:00.001-08:00

I'm exhausted, mentally, but I did it with a day to spare. Now on to finish the story, probably another 30,000 words later!

Whut? Oh, right, NaNoWriMo.

2009-11-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

Awakening from slumber here to say that I'm doing the National Novel Writing Month thing. It's a challenge for a writer to try and finish a novel in a single month, minimum 50,000 words. You get nothing but satisfaction and a little widget to show on your blog or Facebook page or whatever, but trust me, it's more than worth it if you can pull it off.

Current word count is just short of 28,000. I'm on pace to get it done!

Garfield Minus Garfield

2009-08-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

This is possibly the simplest satire I've ever seen, and one of the most effective: turning the most generic of all newspaper comics into a heart-wrenching story of one man's existential struggle against loneliness and depression: Jon Arbuckle, the loneliest man alive. How much longer can he hold out against his demons?

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Bear witness to the slow death of an innocent man at the link above, and I defy you to come away unchanged. (Or, at the very least, unamused.)

Vacation Time

2009-07-31T14:52:00.000-07:00

It's time for this guy to head down to the great Florida peninsula. I promise not to blame anyone for inflicting George Bush on us, nor to refer to the place as "America's wang", nor to complain bitterly about the spectacular combination of heat, humidity, and relentless sunshine to which its residents have become inured. I will, instead, do my best to enjoy the company of long-unseen family members and find some good times down there on the Gulf Coast, catch the Salvador Dali museum and follow up on rumors of a great independent bookstore, Haslam's, in St. Petersburg, which is located somewhere on the underside of the shaft of the Wang.

I'm very sorry for that. You can blame Homer Simpson for implanting that image on my consciousness. Sharing it, I confess, was entirely the fault of my own perverse streak.

Quick note

2009-07-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

Something must have taken hold at Wildacres, because two weeks ago I sat down to write a key part of the book and now I have over 8,000 words encompassing two important days. I don't know whether they're any good, but that part of the story is complete and I'm now moving on to another part, trusting myself to link them all together later. Already, ways to do that are suggesting themselves.

Onward we go toward completing this story.

Sunday quick link

2009-07-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

http://thebrowntweedsociety.com/

The Brown Tweed Society is a smart, funny entertainment blog maintained by some sharp guys. Lots of insightful good humor and surprising depth to be had here. Do check them out.

A small annoyance.

2009-07-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

So, when I bought my cherished, indispensable laptop, it came with a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007. Of course, I immediately installed Open Office, but I thought I'd give Big Bill's product a whirl, if for no other reason than already having years of experience using other versions of Word. For the most part, it's fine.

But that grammar checker. Oh my.

I believe I have a good handle on grammar. When I write, it's usually in a conversational, offhand tone, and therefore somewhat prone to be incorrect under a rigid and humorless application of the rules, but overall I'm right far more often than I'm wrong. Except, of course, according to Word 2007.

It would be one thing if Word 2007 were the software equivalent of the too-rigid grammar police, technically correct regardless of euphony. But Word 2007 has quirks far beyond that. Instead, Word 2007 offers suggestions as changing "I am" to "I is". In place of "Harry's", it suggested "Gharry's", "Hurry's", and "Harries", while recognizing Harry in its non-possessive state as a correct, common proper name. Its suggestions are hilariously bizarre, like listening to someone riffing on Dan Quayle's suggested spelling of potato, except that it's entirely earnest.

I'm not writing to bash Word 2007. No. I'm writing to thank Word 2007 for instilling a sense of self-reliance and faith in my understanding of grammar, because I'm sure as hell not relying on that piece of junk.

Just a quick share here.

2009-07-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've never seen Henry Rollins get owned before, but I think this DJ has done the impossible.

Books you shouldn't miss

2009-07-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for three things in my job. First novels, because I would want booksellers to check out my own first novel and champion its cause; literary love stories, because I hope to write a good one myself someday; and coming-of-age stories, because it's just one of my favorite forms of a novel. So I could go recommending stuff like The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, but you already know (or should know) that it's going to be good, and I'm not into telling people what they already know.

So instead I'm going to focus on some of my favorite easy-to-miss novels of the last couple of years, discovered thanks to Joseph-Beth.

The Translation of Dr. Apelles, David Treuer. This one's been around for a while - it came out February 2008 - but I feel the need to keep pushing it. A scholar of obscure Native American languages is translating an ancient love story in a language only he speaks while realizing, at midlife, that he has himself never been in love. Beautiful and daring with a neat postmodern twist at the end, a lovely Klein bottle of a novel.

The Slide, Kyle Beachy. The long hot post-graduation summer of Potter Mays, a young man with a knack for making bad situations worse. Part coming of age story, part ghost story (kind of), it's a promising debut from a young author that I had a lot of luck promoting as my staff pick.

Nothing But A Smile, Steve Amick. A smart, sexy, sweet love story about people making pinups in the final days of World War II and the years immediately following. It was everything I wanted it to be and nothing I didn't. Like the pinups themselves, Amick takes a "less is more" approach throughout and manages to make something greater. A great example of what a good love story can be in the right hands, namely, entirely free of schmaltz.

Let The Great World Spin, Colum McCann. This is the one I can't stop talking about. It's an expertly constructed series of linked narratives set in New York City in 1974, tied together with the tightrope walker that walked between the World Trade Center towers. Each voice feels authentic and fully realized. If this doesn't get McCann the recognition he deserves, I don't know what on earth will. An early candidate for my personal ten best of the year.

The blog revived, post-Wildacres

2009-07-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

I'm reviving this blog from its state of disuse, dusting it off and circulating it to friends made at Wildacres.

MY GOD, WILDACRES.

I'm still processing how valuable this experience was, but I can summarize the three best things I took away from it.

1) I know how I'm going to finish this book. I've been fumbling in the dark and somebody named Luke Whisnant just turned the lights on. Between his instruction and the sharp insights from my classmates, I know so much more about how to do this now. I'll be back next year with a finished novel. Mark it down.

2) All the friends I made down there. What a liberating group of people to be around. I can't list them all here, there are just too many and I know I'll screw up and forget somebody. But long-timers and first-timers alike made this experience invaluable. So many stories, so many interesting lives, so many memories. I can't wait to see you all again next year (as many as possible! Please, come back, let's party on the mountain again!)

3) The sense of validation I got about both my writing and my chosen subject matter. When you do something so drastic as to quit practicing law, take a job for eight dollars an hour at a bookstore and say you're going to write, you get a lot of doubts with it, your own and other people's. When, after you've done that, you're writing about people playing games and meeting at conventions all over the Midwest and South, you get an extra-large serving of doubt slathered in doubt gravy with a packet of Double Dutch Doubt Cremes for dessert. But I left Wildacres determined both to keep writing and to stick to what I'm writing about.

Tim Poland, incidentally a hell of a guy, asked and answered this question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? No, it doesn't." He went on to explain that there may be this vibrant, burgeoning subculture out there, they may get together by the tens of thousands in places like Indianapolis and Atlanta and San Diego every year at mega-conventions that rival any party you've ever seen, a real live Nerdi Gras, but if nobody writes about it, then it doesn't matter. It may as well not have happened. So if it's important to so many people, it needs more voices, more people taking its cultural significance seriously. So that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to stick with the subject and treat it - and the people involved in it - seriously.

So I am grateful to everyone involved and I plan to be back next year, selling books, writing stories, and dancing the night away.