Tell my why

What I want to say is nothing at all but inevitably there are words. I have been busy writing and reading. I wanted to write more today but its all pieces and no puzzle. What I need is a detective to come here and read things and tell me what should go where and why. What is the point of writing a novel? I can't seem to find one.

The whole thing is too dense and circular, there is no story. I started with one intention and found it too hard to continue with, I lost the purpose in it. Its too thick, too muddy. Peter Bishop said I must allow the reader to breathe, I need more air in my mixture more paragraphs of nothing so that a reader can continue reading while the dense stuff makes sense in their heads. I used to think but what is a novel if it is not the pointed tip of your arrow? That was before I started reading "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. The blurb on the back says that "her genius is at once more difficult and more original than that of any other novelist of today" and now I tend to agree. I used to fall into a Virginia Woolf lightly and easily but today I found it too much and I longed for one or two of Peter Bishop's air paragraphs. Of course my work is no way comparable to Virginia Woolf's (der), it is sometimes thick like hers but without the flash of genius.

What I need is a printer. I feel convinced that if I could print things and lay out the pages one after another across the bed and the floor that I could make sense of it all but that won't do. I must press on without making imaginary difficulties.

This afternoon when I tired of writing I read Stefan Laszczuk's "the Goddamn Bus of Happiness". I was able to dispatch it without difficulty, it has pace, plot and air. It seems so simple to do something like that when you are reading it but I do not work like him, not at all, I must be content to be a person without plot, I will type without reason and to hell with the consequences.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Your blog is boring.
DS said…
Yes, I know but seeing as I'm already typing I might as well tell you to fuck off.
Anonymous said…
That wasn't very nice.
DS said…
No, it wasn't.
Anonymous said…
Dale, your blog is not boring. I like the way you struggle with the purpose and practice of writing, and that you take it seriously.
Maybe you do need a printer - Virginia had one: Leonard!
Also, I agree with you: Anonymous should fuck off.
DS said…
Thanks. You might be right, I need a modern Leonard. I once had a goldfish called Leonard Woolf, I think I was on the right track there though he was crap at printing, that goldfish.
TimT said…
I had a crack at writing a novel about a year back. I literally thought I'd be able to crap on at length for several thousand words, padding out several chapters with lies or patent absurdities, but it didn't quite work out that way. Who would have thought that character and overarching plot and dialogue would be such hard things to master?!?

Keep at it, Dale. You're blog ain't boring, but Anonymous is.
DS said…
What happened with your novel Tim? Did you finish it?

I'll keep at it but its getting harder, the deadline is creeping up on me rather quickly.
Shelley said…
I'm sure Tim's novel is still on the internet somewhere... Both chapters of it.
He left out the breathing thing but I've bought and read worse things.
Shelley said…
That last line was unnecessarily harsh. It certainly wasn't a criticism directed at Tim.
DS said…
Breathing thing?
Shelley said…
'Peter Bishop said I must allow the reader to breathe...'
TimT said…
alexandervonmunchausen.blogspot.com

It needs a rethink and I need a slightly better conviction than 'just throw in any old idea and character that seems interesting'.
TimT said…
My general laziness may have something to do with the never finishing, as well.
DS said…
Oh that breathing thing.

I think I need the to add some more crazy ideas into mine.
Anonymous said…
Dale,

that's more like it, needing a printer is so much more the essential writer anxiety then air between paragraphs. Funny though with needing work to breathe, I was always told through-out University that my writing was 'breathless', I kind of like that better. xoxox Rups
Anonymous said…
Oh and anon, if your bored then you're ... oh never mind.

xox Rups
Gemnastics said…
printers come cheap these days and are a worthy investment. i bought one for the same reason you want one. it does help. mine is currently broken and this has created a large gap in my life.
M L Jassy said…
Anonymous, you coward! You have the patience of a newt - the back half of a newt suffering constipation. You'll never work it out because you simply haven't got the time: too busy surfing and jerking from one blog to another, spending about two seconds at each, just long enough to cast your malevolent clouds of fleas and specks of bird flu virus from your maggoty flesh wounds into the open-minds' eyes of honest, patient blogreaders and bloggers alike. Vile "Anonymous", you aren't even worthy of a name: you probably couldn't muster up the patience to think of one.
Ms Slamma, write on. The reason you need to work on your novel, timt on his and me on mine? To teach the world to slow down, think longer, move as if time is here to teach us rather than be commanded by us.
DS said…
Yeah! Take that Anon you fucktard.

And by the way Gemma you are right, Rups you are right and Mitzi G Burger fucking hell. I'm going to be thinking of that time idea for quite a while.

PS Yay Gemma is online.
M L Jassy said…
P.S but if you are pressed for time just set youself the task of a "novella" rather than a longer book. Read E. L. Doctorow's "lives of the poets" for a good example. I think William Styron has a good novella or two.
For more adequate literature on time read a book by Jay Griffiths (UK) called "Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time". It's the kind of book that could fix the innards of a fob watch using ruby enlaid chopsticks and the point of an ice-cream cone: rich and delicious, impossibly clever.