Believe it or not, I have an update for April! It's actually April 30th at 10:45 PM, meaning that if I wait only another hour or so it will be May. If I post my entry right at midnight, can I count an update for both April AND May? That's just a good use of slacker resources! Why update twice if I can get away with only once! You know, if it didn't take so much energy and brainpower to procrastinate everything, I could get pretty proficient at this slackerishness . . . only then I would be a successful slacker, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose . . . bummer.
I have good news! I have completed the first draft of my new book! Yes, okay, that's not exactly enough to float any of your boats out there, not like I've actually accomplished anything, not like I've done anything productive with my time, like feeding the homeless or sheltering injured bunnies or joining the Occupy City Creek campaign or anything noble like that. No, I'm only a poor blue-collar writer trying to make his way in the world, raised in the ghettos of Brigham City, barely literate, teaching myself to read off of Campbell Soup labels and gum wrappers because I had to skip school to tend to the family raccoon farm . . . Okay. Sorry. Getting carried away. That's actually my friend Emily Schultz's childhood story. Sorry for plagiarizing!
THE POINT IS that I've completed the first draft of my book! Now I'm in the painful revision stage. Right now the first draft is as fat as a Pittsburgh Steeler fan's belly after a tailgating party. My book would probably be classified in the Young Adult or Juvenile genre (ha, ha, you say, how surprise, something juvenile from Stephen!). A first novel in this genre usually runs about 70,000 words. Mine is around 90,000. Yikes. So I've cut out about eight pages. I need to go on popping out words like zits on my teenage son's face, but the problem is I don't know which ones to cut! This reminds me of the great scene in the movie, Amadeus, when Emperor Francis II tells Mozart that his opera has "too many notes."
That, incidentally, reminds me of another great anecdote. A tale is told (perhaps apocryphally) of James Joyce, author of what is widely considered the greatest novel in the English language, Ulysses (a real snoozer if you ask me, but then what have I ever accomplished!) Anyway, Joyce was famous for his incredibly slow pace of writing, mostly because he labored over every single word in his novels. One day a close friend visited Joyce and found him particularly despondent. When asking Joyce about the cause of his distress, Joyce said: "I've written ten words today." His friend replied: "Why, James, that's great! Much more than usual! Why are you depressed!" Joyce (the hack) cried; "Because I don't know what order they go in!"
Ah, yes, the great trial for authors. The brutal revision process. Very akin to organ transfers and other acts of remarkable personal courage. I need to cut, cut, cut, but never fear, my loyal readers (I'm basically only talking here to my son who I've bribed with twenty bucks to skim through the manuscript), I will only cut the bad parts. I'll leave all the best parts in! THAT reminds me of a great line from Jack Nicholson in the movie, As Good As It Gets. Nicholson plays the author of steamy, airy, romance novels, all from the women's perspective. One day a raving female asks: "How do you write women so well?" Nicholson replies: "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." Now that's called editing!
By this weekend, lucky fans, I will post a teaser on this blog to my new book. I'll post the first chapter or two, just to whet the appetite (or send you running to the toilets). I'll give you this much, a title.
Drumroll please . . . the title is . . . no, on second thought, I won't give it to you. You can just wait. Until then, my thanks for your reading this ridiculous blog. Oh, and before I forget, I have some cool updates on my cycling and piano goals as well. But, hey, I've written so much tonight that my poor overworked fingers are just bloody stumps. Actually, it's the NBA playoffs, and I've got to get back to priorities here. Check back in a few days for that sneak-peak!
