Not So Bad A Writer After All

Today I learned I'm not such a bad writer.

It all began when my computer warned me I'm running out of hard-drive space. In cleaning things up, I found a folder that contained all my personal files from the computer I owned before the computer before this computer. Which is to say, the computer I got in 1993 when I moved to Guelph.

Them was some old files in there. Old, and largely forgotten.

Among certain files of note was one containing a smattering of poetry, the best of which I sadly did not compose but were simply poetic things my friend Grog blurted out that I transcribed, such as:

"Facts of Life"
Lenin, look at him
He was a bad mother fucker
Look at the shit he did

And:

"Some Women I Know"
No eloquent son of a bith am I
They have big hairy balls
The size of coconuts

That's good stuff there. I wrote some poems too, but I won't quote mine, since they suck. I am definitely a writer of prose, not poems.

I was heavily into conspiracy theories at the time, and I wrote a Theory of Conspiracism too. It wasn't a real theory, but rather more of a story about a guy who wrote the theory where the story is told almost entirely through footnotes inserted into the theory's text. It's interesting. It's not great, although there are moments I really like. But looking back through the mist of a decade, I can really feel how I was trying to find my voice then. I remember exactly when I wrote it: I'd just sold my hemp store, and didn't have another job yet, and had gone off the Prozac, and was actively trying to find myself.

Like I said, it's interesting.

I wrote more stuff about the guy who wrote the theory, too. He was Professor William Needle, based on an old pseudonym I used to write under. I still use the name all the time, in various ways. Anyway, I think the best was the abortive convocation speech he supposedly gave when accepting an honourary degree. The degree was revoked shortly after he was dragged from the stage before he could finish his speech, hence its abortive nature. I think I'll post that one over at my LiveJournal.

There was also the novel I began writing behind the counter at the hemp store, called Morph. It's about a guy in Waterloo in the late 90's who owns a computer store; one weekend he takes some strange drugs and never comes down from the halucinatory buzz.

The very best line from it goes like this: "Language fails me like an aging Volvo, that is to say suddenly, permanently, but not altogether unexpectedly."

I really like that. You can taste the Douglas Adams influence right there.

Anyway, I was pleased to find that the stuff I wrote over a decade ago still amuses me. Theoretically, the stuff I write now should be even better, although at the time I'm writing it it never feels that way.

Apparently, a lot of writers experience the same thing.

But the timing of my discovery, that after some time I can appreciate my own work, was fortuitous. I began the new year by starting the new novel I've been working on anew. Again. I realized some time ago that the thing holding me back from finishing it was the voice I'd chosen to write in. The narrative voice was godlike; in fact, it was meant to be God telling the story. But I wasn't having fun with it, and a new way of telling the story occurred to me and excited me.

I'm using my own voice. Imagine that. And yes, Professor Needle now has a role to play in it too.

So I'm energized to keep going with this one until I finish it, and to help me I'm using Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" method. I'm using a calendar and checking off each day I write, the idea being that over time there will be a long chain of checked days, and I'll keep writing something every day just so that there won't be any breaks in that chain.

Conveniently, there's a Don't Break the Chain gadget for Google homepage so I can see my pretty chain every time I open Firefox. Sweet.

You know, I think I might even use Google Documents to write it, too.