It's past my bedtime
I’m listening to Tiesto for perhaps the seventh time this week, and I’ve spent the last three hours scribbling indecipherably in a composition notebook. And I feel that’s where I should be. I’m breaking all the NaNo rules that I tested last year, so I thought it appropriate to read through their latest entry, which is a chock full of 43 brilliant koans on creativity.
A few unorganized musings I have myself:
-What’s up with the meta trend? Charlie Kaufman? Yann Martel? Cursive? Breaking the 4th wall? And yes I’m guilty. It seems that meta-narrative is the red-headed stepchild of postmodern art. It’s not that hard to do but the critics fawn. Why is it that despite the prevalence it still comes off as brilliant? Albeit cool (what programmer wouldn’t think so?) I think the ability to create a solid narrative (without the gimmick of postmodern meta wanking) is key.
-A question of titles. Aka – I have no idea what I should call my latest. Always so hard. I don’t see how the old serialized novelists did it. Of course, Dickens never chose titles with any sort of double meaning or hidden metaphor. I’m a firm believer in the power of emergent behavior, especially when it comes to literature. I’m not an architect; I’m a catalyst. I don’t rein from on high, dictating intricate and complex structures – I route flashes of insight into chunks of language. Any emergent complexity left behind is testament the source; like a fossil of my brain-state (preferably intoxicated) when I had the literary urge.
-The tortured artist. As much as I subscribe to the possibility that art benefits from pain, desperation or madness, I myself would rather not be a case study. I’m too selfish that way, so I guess I’ll never be a Hemmingway or a Van Gogh. I’d be content as a Heinlein, a hardworking, nose-to-the-grindstone engineer of pulp novels and dime-a-dozen insight. I’m too whitebread to ever publish something critically-acclaimed, and in way, there something to be said for that. More Kilgore Trout, less Nabakov.
-Chapter Five will be done this week- we’ll see what else Spire City has to offer.
