Novels are like shards of glass. Despite how much I try to convince myself that I can treat each chapter as a short story, I find that per continuing segment my fingers sting more, my head wincing and stuttering at thoughts.
Why, though, is it such an issue?
In all honesty, a novel is a series of short stories, particularly the one I am working on seeing as it is 3rd person single (meaning the narrator is following but one protagonist). It's no different then writing a short story and not finishing it in one go other than duration. Might I add this story is, outside of political theories and various philosophic questioning, an adventure story. After the initial six chapters, which stay in one community (a large community at that, with each chapter taking place in a different part save for two) the entire story should be, more or less, engaging to me.
When I begin though... ugh.
And this isn't so simple a solution as "maybe the story isn't for you." The reality is that this story has boiled and rotated insided my head now for eight months. Most novel projects are a week, two week high for me that I abandon no different than the 100+ short stories I drop per year. But here is this project, nearly fully fleshed upon conception and now I find the veins connecting and the ligaments functioning.
Despite the quality that it will amount to (low, I'd assume), the story exists on a scale like that of a child. A child I don't really like 95% of the time though still my child whom is occasionally cute and draws nifty robots.
It just seems so crude. Not the story but the project, The Novel. I hate it, it's a horrible word that is literally slathered with capitalist-engineering and objectivist-agreement. It's miserable! It's ugly! It's rude! And still I have to write the damn thing because unless the New York Times is going to start publishing my crap short stories and calling me with tear-choked throats pleading for another with a $1000 check already en-route to my home, the only way I am going to make writing an actual means by which I live is to write, indeed, the novel.
Bah-Humbug!
P.S. As for the personal-essay assignment due this friday... I have made no progress. Writing in the style of Rios bares to me no better fortune than that of the strangely labeled "Happily recount Unhappy Family" assignment which, despite the four times I went over it in the book, I still don't grasp.
I wish there was a way to write the noise that kids make about missles. That's what I feel like.
Pewwwwww-Brkk!
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