Thursday, September 14, 2006

700 words. Meh.

Half the manifesto is complete.

Well, maybe only a third. I dunno. This book seems to have a tendency to spiral out of my control whenever it seems fit. This seems like an area where it might.

Bottom line, only 700 words tonight before I threw in the towel. Which isn't bad, actually, because after getting home at 9:00 p.m., and making my lengthy school-violence-rant on the blog, I really didn't think I'd have much left in me.

But I had a little.

Surprisingly.

So I went and spent it.

And it didn't feel too bad. It didn't feel too far off from where it was when I was improv-writing it behind the wheel of the car driving into town a few days ago.

Which is nice.

Most of the time, I never feel like I can get close to that moment of initial inspiration. Most of the time, whenever I have to revisit something I already thought out, plotted out, scripted out, it comes out feeling weaker, watered down.

This...not so much.

That feels good.

But now it's 11:15, and I'm burn out, and I have so much more to say, but I don't have the energy for it, so I hope it stays right on the surface. I hope I can find it quickly tomorrow night, I hope I can slide easily right back into the moment agian. And I think, if I can get at it tomorrow, I might be able to.

In other book related news, I've been thinking about a new title for it for the last couple of hours, one I stumbled upon completely accidently, even though it should have been a no-brainer because I already started writing a short story with the same title a number of years ago, a short story with no hope of ever going anywhere.

It's also a no-brainer because it follows the same naming scheme I used for the last novel -- "Waiting for a Miracle" -- which borrowed (or, if you'd prefer, stole) it's title from a piece of modern music.

The title I'm now considering for the current book?

"Absence of Faith."

Which isn't exactly stolen from the title of a song, but rather from a line in a song -- in this case, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails.

It's a nice phrase, one that's been stuck in my head pretty much since I first heard it. And it sums up a lot of the themes of the book quite nicely. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to homage the source material, like I did for "Waiting for a Miracle," by quoting it, as I'm already leaning towards two book-opening quotes that aren't "Closer."

One of the quotes is from a Nine Inch Nails song, so I suppose that could be an acknowledgement, but...

Just a thought. And those handful of you who visit this blog, feel free to toss in your comments on the title (even though, of course, you don't know a heck of a lot about the book at this point). It's far from written in stone at this point, and I'd gladly welcome any other perspective at the moment.

I may not officially slap a title on this thing until after I type the words "THE END" but there's no reason not to start planning right now.

2 comments:

elise_on_life said...

I haven't read the section yet that you printed off for me, so I won't comment on the title. I had picked it up a few nights ago, but then decided that I should work on editing "Waiting for a Miracle" first. So, I actually did a chunk that night! Yay for me!

Todd said...

And I've since heard that you have, in fact, finished editing the first half (more or less) of "Waiting for a Miracle."

Further yays for you.

And thanks, as well.

Looking forward to seeing all the red pen marks.