Sunday, March 30, 2003 Victory laps part I
I remember how full of hubris I was last summer. I was staying in rural Maryland, interning on the Podunk Weekly, and I thought I was such hot shit. For one thing, I was the snappiest dresser in the whole office. I wrote the best copy. I didn't have any motivational plaques on my desk at all. Also, I was *ahem* working on my novel, and I was knocking my own socks off on a daily basis with how well I was doing. I began to tell myself that novels were really my "thing."
This served as an immense relief, because I've always been on the lookout for a "thing" to call my own. Previous "things," including veganism and Cure fandom rendered me insufferable to most of the population of the world. I'm serious. Inuits wouldn't let me into their igloos, and on faraway Pitcairn Island, villagers rolled their eyes and made gagging motions at the mention of my name.
Novel-writing produces much of the same results, but in my little pleasure dome that summer, I surrounded myself with people who were duly impressed by my "shock and awe" literary strategy.
I found the NaNoWriMo website sometime in June, and after that it was all over for any vestiges of humility I still clung to. Not only was I going to write my thesis in novel-form, I was going to write the entire first draft over the summer. I would spend the first couple weeks of school blowing theatrically on my freshly-painted (shell pink) manicure and asking people what *they* did over the summer in a bored-but-polite tone. Then, I would revolutionize Pravda. I'd start by redesigning the logo and front page, move on to firing the indesirables and replacing them with my smarter, more competent friends and acquaintances, and start doing some really hard-hitting articles about Things That Mattered. By then, it would be November, and after recovering from my usual Halloween bender, I would leap out of bed and begin writing MY SECOND NOVEL OF THE YEAR !!!
After that, I would chill out a little, eat some tofurkey leftovers, and then pick which novel was the most worthy of revision. I would spend Christmas break and the spring month polishing the most likely candidate, and then I would graduate with honors and take home a large cash prize.
posted by Frenz | 3/30/2003 12:12:00 PM
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