noedit / 1.22.24 / never finish

So I haven’t written anything here in a while and I suppose I should get to writing because the big book is coming out this October and that’s only 10 months away at least mathematically speaking.

I’ve been busy with work and working on another book called the Whirlpool of Lebanon that I’ve already written three times but I can’t seem to get right. I told my mom it’s not right and she asked how can it be right? Which is kind of a good point but it has just never felt right.

What’s interesting is certain elements and events and characters start to seem essential and come up again and again in each version as though they definitely belong there. So I guess my response to my mom would be those parts are right. Now getting all the right parts in the right places in this latest draft is my final attempt to slay the beast.

Most recently I wrote it on an Olivetti Lettera 32 manual typewriter after learning that this was Cormac McCarthy’s preferred machine. Funnily enough it did seem to make my writing more McCarthyesque and I don’t mean in terms of quality I mean in terms of comma scarcity. It’s just a pain to add commas on a typewriter and there’s a lovely feeling of hammering away at the letters so you don’t want to stop and deal with all those pauses. It can really rush and that feels great.

Going analog with my Olivetti Lettera 32.

What doesn’t feel great is having written about 80,000 words to realize that haste really does make waste and most of it is useless. I pretty much learned that a major character needs to go for good, however, and that some commas are essential. See previous sentence.

So I am now going back to my old ways of reading what I wrote the day before and then writing from there and deleting and starting over and pecking way and editing and fretting at it like I did with Second-Smartest. That’s how Hemingway did it and again I’m not saying the writing deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as his name but he knew something about writing.

Another guy who knew something about writing was Vonnegut who just appeared in a documentary of his life I watched last night. You can watch it on Hulu and if you are a book nerd or just a Vonnegut fan I would recommend it. In a weird turn of famous people knowing famous people it was directed by Vonnegut’s close friend Robert B. Weide who just so happened to direct Curb Your Enthusiasm too.

Worth a watch.

Anyway I bring it up because in one part they explain just how many times Vonnegut had to write Slaughterhouse Five to get it right. He did version after version after version sometimes giving up after a paragraph or after a half a book. I think I remember from SH5 itself that he says he spent about a million words to get the thing down. And that’s what it takes. It takes a sort of obsessive dogged fanatic masochism and unceasing will to get it right. And that’s inspiring. Because he did get it right in the end. He got it really really right. And I hope I do too. Eventually.

Until then I’m doing 2-3 hours every morning on the laptop and I’m hoping to have it finished this year but I’m always reminding myself of what Steinbeck said: Never think of finishing. Or something along those lines. Thinking of finishing can really be a will crusher because it feels eternal. I suppose this is a zen lesson here too about simply existing and about the performative element of writing and learning to enjoy the actual act. Some days I do and some days I just feel like I’m stuck.

Okay this should have ended a few sentences ago so that’s all for now I hope to do more of these in short little bursts without any editing at all hence the term noedit and if nobody ever reads them so be it I yawp into the great abyss and it can yawp back if it wants.