My First Novel (Chapter 2 Posted)

[altoecko]

I'm going to write the whole thing in topics like this, misspellings and all. You don't have to read, but I just need a place to put this where I can access it anywhere I am. I'll be keeping it here and on my xanga. I would appreciate it if you told me any grammatical/language errors I make so I can correct them if I think they need correction. This will be very much so stream of conscience sort of writing and there will be some chapters that are just poems. I want to write this now while I still can and get it over with. Suggestions and feedback are of course always welcome, whether it's good or bad, I want it.

Chapter -2 (Prologue)
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This book is a work of fiction, but none of the names have been changed and I apologize to anyone who reads this and takes offense to it, I will defend you best I can, but I can only work with what you've given me in life. However little that is. This is the story of my life, from before to today(whatever that day may be, I wrote this before writing the book) so bear with me. I know you can't force art and I realize that if I made a perfect replica of art none of our senses would be able to tell the difference, but I want something genuine. Perhaps not authentic, but at least it will be genuine. I'll keep white lies to a minimum but I will put a LOT of fiction in here. I can't tell you where reality ends and whatever it is this web I'm spinning begins but if you should ever ask me I'll tell you the truth, the whole truth i might add. There will never be a sequel to this book because I'd feel like too much of a sellout if I did such a thing. I apologize if words go missing, I may not have the money for a proofreader and I may not even have help writing this, though I hope I do. I'm looking at you whoever has the fortune(I can use that word without sounding like an asshole, right?) to read this before it's in any published form.


I will clarify right now as I have still not mastered the art of portraying my inner self perfectly (I pray I never do, too much clarity in art and you ruin it; too little and no one likes it but pretentious ****s who just want to seem better than they are) I AM NOT BETTER THAN YOU. Let me repeat that, I AM NOT BETTER THAN YOU, I don't think I'm better than you, I know I'm not. I am just as good. Men are not born equally, created equally, or hell, made equally but that doesn't mean we should not be treated as such though. That is, if help is needed, offer it, don't force it as unwanted help hurts more than it helps.


That's another thing I should get out of the way, I will be rehashing a lot of what I've already said in my poetry and my day to day. I apologize if you've already heard a metaphor I use or if you've seen me say something a thousand times before. This is for a new audience(I hope) and this is supposed to be an amalgamation(god that word is so nasty and fancy) of my life's story's.
Now, without further ado, on with the show.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Double space between paragraphs preez.

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Chapter -1.5 ( PROLOGUE WITH A VENGEANCE)
=--------------------------------=
These are not confabulations, nor am I a victim of false memory syndrome. Though I took a theories of personality class once and remember a psychologist saying that the memory is important whether it's true or not. I'm sure P. K. Dick would have a thing or two to say about memories too, but you know what? This is for entertainment purposes, not for factual histories. I don't want sympathy, I don't want help(I'll ask you if i need it, remember), and I certainly don't want to hear about how much of a liar I am. I know, as we get closer and closer to the end of the book the lies(though I should probably start saying fiction to sound like less of an asshole) will disappear more and more. I used to be a chronic liar, but most didn't know because I was a ****ing pro. I grew up though. I used to claim others poems as mine, THAT I can't forgive myself for, but I can apologize to those I used to claim. I don't remember you all, but I do remember some of you. I am not the reincarnation of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, that was the best lie I probably ever pulled off. It's not true though, I may be somebodies soul, but I know it's not Paul's. Now, on with the REAL show.

P.S. Every uncapitalized i is on purpose.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Why?

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

There's the ideal self which is represented by the capitalized I who is who I should be and what I'm shooting for, then there's the person who I am right now, or the i. Now, just because i don't stack up to I, doesn't make the lower case me any less of a person, it just means I've still got work to do to get up to the level I want to be at. I hope this makes sense. I'm not going to mention this in the book anywhere, I'll let them figure it out just from the clue I've given them.

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Chapter -1 (Difficulty Setting)
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I am unsure if any other books have done this, but I think it's a shame if they haven't already.
*I will have to come back and edit this once I have finished the book. I will have five difficulty settings:

OCD Mode: You must play every song I put on a playlist in order for each chapter. I do not recommend this for anyone, but as with all things there are those that feel they must COMPLETELY go through something before they can walk away from it. This is for those people, I will match up every song I choose(I'm looking at somewhere between 190 and 200 songs right now) with a corresponding point in the story to help flesh out the text.

Hard Mode: Play all the songs I choose on random, but only play the songs I've chosen for each chapter, this way it's the same messages portrayed over and over again. Meaning if I have songs A - D matched up to be played in order for a chapter on OCD Mode, then you would play the same songs for that chapter, but they would be on random. Use this mode if you just want to be one of those guys who really studies a book, but doesn't let it rule his life.

Medium Mode: Play all the songs on random while you read the book. This mode is what I suggest for most anyone. You shouldn't be brainwashed into my mindset anyways, sure, another's world is a wonderful place to visit, but it should only be rare cases that you choose to live there.

Easy Mode: Play as many songs off the list as you can get on random.

Free Mode: Do I honestly have to explain this to you?

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Robert Jordan's done something similar with a CD soundtrack that he felt captured the moods of one of his books. Forget which.

[peachy]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

murakami's after dark has something similar, but instead of having a list of songs that are being played to convey the mood throughout the chapter, he often pays a lot of attention to what's playing on the radio and he talks about music a lot through the book.

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Chapter 0 (The Foundation AKA The Consummation)
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People don't just appear someday in a tiny bundle of nerves, fibers, and blankets crying all the way down into their mothers arms, birds flapping in the distance. Name not included.

It could be a lot of stories: a horror of pain and love like A Farewell to mom, a bastard accident from too much alcohol, religion, and ignorance, or a perfect conception just like Dr. Lipschitz told you it would be. Mine from what I've been told was at first a dance party where my father was a vampire and my mother was a witch. Funny how they mimic their costumes in real life. I think everyone does ever subtly. I mean, every mask you put on is just another person you become. How deep their fingerprint will be is entirely up to you, but you know they leave one. Family members and old friends have told me that my father was charming and witty and I'm sure he was. Don't get me wrong, he still sort of is. He just deals in a trade of humor I like to dub cornography. I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks for that one. Now, at this party my father charms my mother rather wondrously. They go on a few more dates, my father loves my mother, my mother loves my father, my father wants to marry my mother, and they are married.

My brother was alive at this time, 7 or so I do believe probably with a grandparent or a friend during the party, but a constant presence when not. His father and my mother divorced a long time ago. Now I do not come running to the scene as the unifying consummation of their love my dear readers. The star of our egotistical little show shouldn't even have shown up at all. For you see, my father loved my mother very dearly and he lusted many women very deeply while he loved her. And she loved him, and she dealt with it. How she did I am unsure. How he did, I understand. Well once my father brought home with him a sign of affection and gave it to my mother. The factory hit hard times then, jobs started drying up, and the town of my mother's reproductive system had a great depression all to itself. My mother had to have a few buildings demolished completely. Oh they tried for me, but unlike them, I never came.

Fast forward a bit into the marriage and my mother has a career(without my father's permission) and my brother has a mean streak. A cool mean streak I gotta say, sniping kids with bee-bee guns just sounds bad-ass. Doesn't change the fact you're still sniping kids with a bee-bee gun. Don't worry, he got his reward, bitten several times by the neighbor with braces during a fight. Had to go the hospital, what a pansy. The kids dad had a model train in his basement, these are all the memories I have of him.

They live in a model neighborhood in a house they designed. It has a wonderful front door with a circle of glass in the middle with one of those fancy designs southern women love. It has going from left to right in my patchwork baby/family media memory a living room we can den in, a hallway with a bathroom pinned between it and the kitchen, a den we lived in straight down the hall, the stairs going up, and the dining room to the right. The judge skated in there in his little tomb of a frame, that was unholy ground for baby Mitchell. Grown-ups ate in there and made terrible cackling noises at jokes that weren't nearly as funny as the responses. You don't need the layout for the whole house. We had a nanny and I had a few other moms stop by that mom never knew about. Then i happened, a late Christmas present or an early valentine's day celebration.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: My First Novel (Its Unfolding Atleast)

Stream of consciousness and just going with the flow....

Dunno if I can stay interested in this. I'm already flagging. And being that it's raw and unedited I'm less interested.

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Up To Chapter 0)

Well, help me shape it up then. No use writing a book no one wants to read.

[altoecko]

Re: My First Novel (Up To Chapter 0)

Chapter 1 (I Before i Except After Me)
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Logic will tell you I was there for my first year on the Earth, but I swear to you i was not there, at least in my memories I'm not. I have brief flashbacks little things here and there, but there are few memories I can look at and call my own. My brain is a computer and I don't have the right software to open those files or maybe they're partitioned off from me completely, who knows? Not me, I never had control. Manual not included.

That's what writers do, they give you the same angle with different wording. The same slant with better vocabulary. The path to perdition lined with good indentions. I'm not a writer though, I'm a poet and poets don't give you finely wrapped gift boxes you can open and put on the bookshelf for all your pretentious friends to compliment you on. No, sometimes we'll give you the gift. Sometimes we'll just give you the wrapping paper. Me? I give you the tools to make your own gift. Little splotches of things here and there with a vague general outline of what it should be. You interpret me how you want, it's fine, I know who I am and I don't need your validation. You don't need mine either.

I'm aware that being perceived one way by the world and acting in the privacy of your own soul as another is a deceitful way to live. So I try to be the same regardless of where I am, but Dunbar, Shakespeare, Festinger, and many more are right. We wear masks and sometimes full blown costumes, we just can't help it.

Remember, i give you the tools to build the world and a general outline. But I've always agreed with the saying: "Whoever told you to color inside the lines didn't understand the concept." I'll walk hand in hand with you through the recesses of my soul and memories, or you can trudge on ahead by yourself. Your choice, like most everything in life that isn't handled by the government.

I had a red pick-up truck on my personal birthday cake as i dove into it and threw it at people and ate it myself. There was another cake for everyone else with cars and trucks on it. The personal self and the social self. The holy ghost and the son. The metaphor and the simile. Same thing, fancier words.



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Use for later:
1st: Red Pick-up Truck cake for me, trucks and cars for everyone else
2nd: Big Bird & Cookie Monster (girlfriend next to me)
3rd: Purple Dinosaur(not barny)
4th: Power Ranger (white ranger)
5th: Batman
6th: No cake
7th: Ice cream cake (general writing)
10th: Cheesecake (general writing)
12th: Ice Cream Cake (general writing)
13th: Ice Cream Cake (general writing)
14th Ice Cream Cake (general writing)
15th: Ice Cream Cake (general writing)
16th: Cheesecake and red velvet (general writing)
17th: Creme Brule with a candle in it
18th: Cake made by friends (general writing)/ Cheesecake
19th: Tiramasu Cheesecake

[Shard]

Re: My First Novel (Chapter 1)

So I've read through Chapter 1, and I've got mixed feelings.

I perceive it like it's someone's personal diary written for broadcast, as though, instead of being a personal chronicle, it's meant to be read in front of a class, or shouted at people from a street-corner.

I don't think I have much bias against stream-of-consciousness as a style. Highwind manages it pretty well, but you can read his stuff and it's obvious a lot of time went into the crafting of it. I guess what's bothering me is that it feels like a brainstorm session set down in a narrative. It might be that I'm just seeing it too early in the formative stages. While I like what you've got conceptually, it lacks artistry in its execution.

I hope that didn't come off as crass or mean-spirited. That's not my intent.

[altoecko]

Chapter 2 (I Am A Book)
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I'm interrupting the flow of things here, not as a story telling device like Vonnegut or Zemeckis uses but to help you read my book better. To translate for you because I fear I speak a different language than most people. In English classes they make you hide away all the pulleys and levers so that in the end the people have a perfect little work of art or a beneficial product for the betterment of the socialist whole. No signatures hidden in the painting. Not letting anyone know the blood sweat and tears you poured into it. Just a pretty picture. If your job is to hide all the strings, then do it.

(I wanted to apologize here for disregarding your laws, but I don't think one should ever apologize for doing something they know without a doubt to be true in their heart.)
Writing to me is a hobby, not a job or a career or really anything beneficial in a Marxist or Keynesian system of the world. Writing is what I do with myself, but it's more so a form of conscience-plasticity inwards not quite introspection and not quite meditation. I'm no narrativist in my ideals though, how shall I put this... I have a very inward locus of control, so inward in fact that I feel I can almost change fate if I calculate the equations in life a little far out. But life is probabilities and as I've said, the only absolutes are government mandated.

I know how egotistical this sounds, but i swear to you I do not have a God complex, I know what a cult of personality is and I can see the outside of what I am perceived as. It's only when the group rejects the individual that the individual recognizes the negative aspects of the group. I've been outside myself a few too many times through accidents, drugs, or choices. I've always been on the outside of the world. I know what I am perceived as because I ask others or I pay attention to it.

What does all this have to do with the book? Writing is my hobby, and a hobby is something you do for the mere enjoyment. I find enjoyment in sharing an activity with others. I don't want to hide away all the pulleys and strings because I want people to understand how I got to where I am or where I was. If you see how it's done, you can do it yourself. That's all empathy is, hell that's all any profession is.

But once you see the hidden compartment for the rabbit, it's all over. The magic is gone for some. But the magic never leaves, it just makes us have a low tolerance for bull****. You have to come up with something truly impressive to make it really seem like magic. If your job is based on keeping secrets, you keep secrets. This is my hobby, not my job. I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, but I want anyone who wants to join in the fun be able to. A secret club is only cool if it's a secret, if everyone knows about it, but only a few have access, that's not cool. That is elitism. I'm no better than you, this is why the clock is so precise, this is what makes it tick, and this is why the scene in the story works so well.

Like Chuck said though, focus on the details get lost in the work. I'm giving you a healthy balance. An even perspective and giving you a choice, look from inside, outside, or any side you want. Join in the fun of my world if you want, but know that nothing is perfect and no one is always right.

Don't judge a book by it's cover. But what if the first four chapters are slow because they have to be? What if it's a slow tantric building? Sometimes a story doesn't get good till a little ways in. Maybe someone did it on purpose as a test to filter out the patient people. A form of forced Darwinian selection if you will. I'm just saying, maybe.

I still want to be authentic but I want to be appreciated for being different. I want to appreciate you for being different. I've seen the internet and life in general take something nice and unique and copy pasta or ditto things till they lose all luster. A jewel is still a jewel, it is just dirty. You have to craft it back into a worthy form if it is to be called beautiful. Content first, craftsmanship second.

Secrets only have value due to their rarity and you can't truly love someone if you have no secrets to trade with them. Love is the only thing i(and I) follow even remotely religiously. Here are my secrets, not all of them because then I couldn't have true love with my closest friends. Here is my love to you world, please, come share in life with me. I give you all I have to offer, take as much or as little as you'd like, but just take me with you.

Megalomania is a term I know well. Along with Rhetorician. Acknowledgment of an existence does not make for a good ends justify the means situation. I don't want fame or power, I have no doubt it would go to my head. I only want acceptance on mutually agreeable terms. "This is my way, what is your way, the way does not exist."

[Garr123]

Re: My First Novel (Chapter 2 Posted)

Haven't read it yet, but thought I should mention that if you ever have plans to try to get this published by anything other than a vanity press putting it online is going to screw you over.