New Thoughts
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009It’s probably not a secret to anyone who follows this blog – and I’m actually convinced that no one does – but I haven’t even touched the novel in weeks. My plan to write 2 pages per day was derailed by a serious lapse in confidence, and a general lack of motivation. It also doesn’t help that most of every day is spent engaged in some really soul-draining work. Still, there is hope.
God's Debris
Recently I’ve been reading the works of Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, not the Dilbert books themselves, but God’s Debris and The Religion War. Apart from the stimulating content of these works, Adams chose to write them in a way that would appeal to people with short attention spans – like young people. My attention span of late has shortened, just in that I find a need to fill my every waking moment with some sort of stimulation.
So I’ve found Adams’ works to be enjoyable in that he spares the reader the usual excess of details. Both books can be finished in one sitting – a few hours at most, and in a way, it’s refreshing. Applying this to Poguri and the Land of Nou, I think that perhaps I have been stalled by some need to write the next epic children’s novel. In my determination to write something that was “literature” as well as entertainment – i.e. socially and/or culturally relevant – I’ve gotten caught up in the details.
The thought occured to me before to write the Land of Nou story as a series of chapter books – short 150-200 page affairs that a child could tear through in an afternoon. My commitment to writing an epic sidelined that idea before it had the opportunity to blossom. Now the idea has returned, and I’ve come to realize that the chapter book format does not necessarily preclude the work from being classified as literature.
The tenative plan now is to give each major character individual attention – to tell the overall story from each of their perspectives as they travel back and forth between the waking world and the Land of Nou. With my current day job scheduled to end soon due to lay-offs, I should have more time to devote to the projects which really matter to me. Poguri and the Land of Nou, of course, is at the top of that list.
As I tried to write the “Great Freeze” Tale, it felt more like a distraction from the novel than anything that added to the overall story or the Poguri universe. I found myself using similar themes – particularly the spreading of some worldwide condition. The “Freeze” felt a lot like the “Blight”. So I scrapped it. I still think that the Tales from the Land of Nou is a good idea, and I do intend to work on something along those lines soon, but for now, the novel has returned to top priority.
The “Pogress Reports” [sic] will be semi-regular updates on the progress being made in writing the novel. As of now I have committed to write an average of 2 pages per day in order to finish the book by the end of the year. I think it’s a pretty modest, if not underachieving goal, because some days I’ll be able to write 5 pages and some days I won’t be able to write anything.
