I wrote a great deal this afternoon wasted as fuck. I realize that is not exactly the greatest writing philosophy, so I need to kind of chill out on that front. But this novel is getting really, really good.
I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with.
But there is one issue — I’ve kind of forked the novel AGAIN. The novel is getting a lot better, but now that it’s forked, I can’t just go through an edit things. I’m going to have to tinker and rewrite and restructure things, which will force me to slow down a great deal.
Which, of course, sucks.
I’m trying to speed through things as quickly as possible and all this fucking forking isn’t going to get me to my goal of finishing the third draft by April. I just don’t know what to tell you — I’m trying to make this novel as quickly as possible but it’s just one of those things.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve felt a lot more creative drunk.
Hollywood actresses are a curious bunch. While there’s no easy equation that explains all of their psychology, in general — especially as they get older — such actresses love to run around emotionally and psychologically naked using their roles.
You do you, baby.
This causes “good girls” like Natalie Portman to play a stripper in Closer. This leads some actresses who are probably bi-sexual to play many, many lesbian roles where they get to pretend to fuck another woman under the guise of “acting!”
In short, a lot of Hollywood actresses are freaks — in a good way. More power to them.
My heroine looks a lot like a younger version of Nicole Scherzinger.
Anyway, I only bring this up because my novel has a number of character in it that I could see actresses loving. My heroine is a really complex woman who would allow them to bounce back and forth between being a professional journalists / publisher and being the owner of a strip club / occasional stripper.
Have I got a role for you!
Meanwhile, I have the “comic relief” character who is wide open sexually and keeps causing trouble for the more “serious” characters by how unwilling she is to abide by the traditional gender power dynamic.
But I am really getting ahead of myself. Way, way ahead of myself. I have to finish the fucking novel first. I’m really, really pleased with how things are going, but I still have to stop fucking DRIFTING towards my goal and actually buckle down and get some work done sooner rather than later.
A lot could go wrong with this novel. I definitely fear someone will steal a creative march on me, if for no other reason, I’m just taking too long. But there’s not much I can do about it. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s just taking me a lot longer than I thought to get as far as I have.
But what’s interesting to me is the very thing that makes this novel a bit…edgy…could also be what makes it a success. I am WELL AWARE that because of marketing and human nature that this very interesting situation I’ve come up with will probably be boiled down to, “stripper solves a murder mystery.”
Ugh. That’s not at all what’s going on, but, lulz, what can you do.
But I do think that my heroine is beginning to approach Lisbeth Salander levels of interesting. She could very well be something of an icon if I play my cards right. And the thing that I keep being reminded about is how the interplay between my heroine’s “normal” life of owning an alternative weekly and her “alternative life” of owning a strip club / stripping to relax is something I need to lean into if I’m going to introduce the idea in the first place.
That’s what people — especially women willing to humor me by reading the damn novel in the first place — are going to want to see the most of.
The daydream issue of how Hollywood might address this novel occasionally gives me pause for thought. The obvious way to market the movie is something along the line of the old Pam Anderson movie “Barbwire.”
Double ugh.
The point of the story is not the T&A element of the story, but that by heroine is a woman who has sexual agency and self confidence enough that she is able to be a stripper to relax without giving it much thought.
It’s everyone else — especially horny men — who are the problem.
Anyway, I continue to work my way through the first act of the third draft AGAIN. Hopefully, this time, I will still have momentum enough to make my way through the second and third acts when the time comes.
In an effort to expose myself to some creativity, I went to see “Poor Things.” Or, should I say, I TRIED to see the movie. I left after a few minutes because it was just not very entertaining to me.
Or, put it another way, the moment I realized what was going on with the movie, I bounced. Rather than tell a story that was actually engaging, the movie was Oscar bait for Emma Stone. Also, I understood why (apparently) there’s so much T&A in the movie — the movie is obviously a passion project for Stone and she felt that the only way to get the movie produced was to get nekkid so people would go specifically to see her T&A.
This. Happens. All. The. Time. In. Hollywood.
Especially with older actresses.
The movie was fine, for what it was, but the moment I had the meta elements of the movie figured out, I had better things to do — like work on my novel.
I have a few ideas that are interesting movie ideas, but I don’t know how well they would do as novels. So, I think, if I can summon the energy to do so, I’m going to write a few treatments.
There is one currently semi-funny idea that if I could find a collaborator would be something akin to The Wedding Crashers.
And, yet, lulz, absolutely no one cares what I say or do. I could walk off the face of the earth right now and it would take a few weeks for anyone to notice what had happened.
But I do feel like forcing myself to go outside my comfort zone by writing and developing something other than this one story I’ve been working on for years.
I’m in full swing editing and rewriting the first act of this novel as I prepare to get into the second act and things are going surprisingly well. Thinking about what I know about this novel in my mind, the big takeaway is it’s just not scary or twisted enough to be directly compared to, say, Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” or Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With Dragon Tattoo.”
But, even I, who have EXTREMELY HIGH expectations for any story, have to admit that this is shaping up to be, if nothing else, a really entertaining yarn. It’s the kind of story that will suck the reader in pretty fast just because they will want to see how I have a part-time sex-worker solve a murder mystery, if nothing else.
But there’s one thing I know — you just can’t win. If you take any risks, you are BOUND to somehow, someway offend a small, vocal minority of the audience who will be mad specifically because a smelly CIS white male dared to do anything other than stare at the ceiling and twiddle their thumbs.
So, I press forward.
I still need to work on a backup novel or two. But it’s tough. It’s really tough.
There is a small — but vocal — group of the reading audience that simply can not, will not, validate the idea that I, as a smelly CIS white male, would, at times, write from a female POV in this novel.
And it’s only going to get worse the moment they learn my heroine is a part-time stripper.
And, yet, fuck it, we’ll do it live.
I am so matter-of-fact about the sex worker side of things that I think, within the context of the novel, that it won’t be seen as too terribly gratuitous. It’s just there’s a lot –a LOT — I can do with the whole stripper side of things to make the story really interesting and enjoyable so, lulz, why not.
And Barry — which dealt with an equally surreal professional life — was a success. But that was a comedy, so, I suppose it’s not a one-to-one.
And I am well aware that someone might steal a creative march on me, given how long it’s taking me to write this damn thing. As such, I really need to start to work on some backup stories.
It’s a lot easier to build out nuance when it comes to something like “part-time stripper solves a murder mystery” than it is in a movie.
My fear, of course, is, that if I actually manage to sell this novel and it becomes a success enough to catch Hollywood’s interest, that any movie would focus way too much on the stripper side of things and not that fact that my heroine is the owner of both a strip club and an alternative weekly.
But I think I’m overthinking things. I think all I should worry about is writing the best novel I can. Any thoughts of this novel becoming a movie are way, way, way, way, way, way too early.
Within moments of looking over the beginning of the third draft of the novel, I came up with a new, better (?) beginning. The key thing is I really get right into the part-time sex worker (stripper) element of the story.
I never know how much of these changes will stick and how much is just part of the “breathing” process of the novel where everything moves around for months and months until I FINALLY reach something I kinda, sorta like.
But I think if I’m going to do this editing and rewriting right, I need to calm down some. I need to be more methodical because otherwise, I’m just going to spin my wheels for months and months and lulz, nothing will ever get done.
Part of that is to be more active with my setting and descriptions. In past drafts, I’ve kind of been lack about shit like that because the point was to get something, anything down.
Now that I’m on the third draft, I think I need to give a lot more consideration to describing things. I have a feeling I’m doing all of this wrong, but lulz, I’m doing it in a vacuum and have no one to tell me “no.”
While things feel like they’re doing pretty well, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with this novel. But I continue to press forward. I also continue to think about how I need to give my life some structure.
Maybe my novel will be adapted into a movie one day.
I’m very grateful for this peculiar situation I find myself in that affords me the ability to — essentially — be a professional aspiring novelist, even if I have to live in poverty to do it. Of course this particular situation won’t last forever and any number of things that could happen that will, if nothing else, dramatically change the context of what’s going on in my life.
And I continue to grow unnerved with political events that are totally out of my control. Way too many people believe that if only we can defeat Trump at the polls that magically that will be enough to end the threat of MAGA.
My heroine looks a lot like this woman in my mind.
The events of January 6th, tend to make me believe that Trump could very well demand a National Divorce, and as such, prompt a civil war even if we defeat him at the polls fair and square.
As all of these thoughts fill my mind, I also worry about the possibility that AI will make all my hard work…moot…just as I’m preparing to query in late 2024, early 2025. But there would be something poetic if, rather than querying my novel, I’m dodging bullets from MAGA fascists.
But, who knows. It could go a lot of different ways. And, as such, I need to buckle down and work hard. Or, at least, a lot harder than I am at the moment.
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