For the first time ever, I’m allowing comments (note that I have to approve them before they’re posted). Please don’t make me regret it…

There are those moments where you step out of whatever all of this is and just walk through the fabric, pause and stand there feeling that, all of a sudden, nothing is touchable and you understand that even if you could reach out and prod the needle just a fraction, the world won’t move forward at all.

– Small passage from the thing I’ve been working on.

I’d mentioned in the post about Muay Thai that, creatively, “I’m writing, (both here and something longer and more interesting”.

Well that something longer and more interesting is a novel. It’s a short novel¹ that I started in early 2002. And now, after two plus decades of fighting the story, putting it off, avoiding, dodging distractions, and telling myself excuses as to why I can’t make it work, the rough first draft is done. Like, finally done.

Yeah, you read that right: Twenty three years. I’ve been working on this motherfucker for twenty three years.

I compiled it into a mobi and have been reading through it on my e-reader and it’s…

Well, it’s ok. It’s not going to win any awards. And it needs work. Like, a lot of work. I do admit that I was pretty bummed during the first read through. I spent all that time on this?? There are plot holes. Parts are confusing. It needs to be added to in spots and cut back in others.

And that’s all fine because the first draft is done and let me tell you that this was quite possibly the most difficult thing I have ever done creatively.

Yes, it can take me a “long time” to finish music, but the logistics are completely different. Even though anyone can record music these days, it’s expensive and loud. Setup is complicated. Learning what microphone does what and where to position it and play the part over and over and over and do I put more EQ on that? And then you decide to add acoustic drums.

To put it into perspective, in the time since I started writing this novel, I’ve been in four bands, three of them releasing recorded music and played live, and have written and recorded a pile of music on my own both traditional and electronic.

Writing can be done anywhere at any time. All you need is a piece of paper and a pencil. You can literally tap tap tap a story out on your phone. I spent an inordinate amount of times in my teens writing short stories. In my twenties I attempted to write a science fiction novel, got maybe a hundred or so typed pages in before I lost focus, put it aside and turned my creativity nearly full time to music.

There is something about piecing together a long form story that is challenging to me. Not in the way math is challenging; if that was the case I’d wouldn’t have made it through the first paragraph. A blog is a blog and I can sit here and rant about tech and blab about music and whatever else is on my mind but a novel is something much more. I just slow walk the entire thing, sweat over every little thing and then second guess myself.

/deep breath

So what now? That’s a hard one. First draft is done so I know it’s editing time and I’ve already started this. What about getting it out there? I did think about maybe sending out queries to Literary Agents but at this point I don’t know it that’s worth my time (or theirs, really). I know they rarely take chances on unpublished nobodies.

So far as I know, there is no Bandcamp/DistroKid for books. Then again, I’ve never tried to do anything with a book so I don’t know how it works. I like the idea of maybe self publishing and am researching it. At first glance, it feels like it has the potential to be a pain in the ass. There is so much more to it that anyone who’s never done it thinks, so I’m not convinced it’s the route I want to take.

After thinking about it, my rough plan is this: I’m going to read through it, make notes, fix it up. Get a second draft done. If the second draft jives, then I may ask a couple friends to give it a read and provide their feedback. If that jives, then I think I’ll post it here chapter by chapter.

This of course, leads me to all kinds of other thoughts. Do I just put it here? Do I open it up for comments? What about a newsletter option? Maybe put out the whole thing when I’ve finished putting it here?

Decisions, decisions

Even if it comes to nothing, I can at least say I did it. I wrote a fucking novel.

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1. It sits now, unedited, at about 45000 words. More of a novella, I guess. ↩︎

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