Textcalibur!

My apologies for the lack of substantial updates – since the news of my exemption from the Finnish army, things have kicked into over-drive around here. Every day I’m faced with a new idea or project, all of which sound terribly promising but put together portent a lifetime’s worth of work. Hopefully it’ll quiet down a bit in the fall.

In the meantime, I’ve made a curious observation about the novel which I’ve been writing during my ‘off-hours’, such as they are. I started it just to keep writing while working, setting Saint John aside as it really does require copious amounts of research and fact-checking: things I have neither the time nor the energy to do these days. Anyway, the off-hours project has slowly but surely been growing in the wee hours after I’ve declared my intent to sleep and the inevitable dreamless hours that follow. The other day I had some time to myself in the office and thought to read it over while properly awake.

It’s an awful lot like the would-be novel I tried to write ten years ago. The novel that I desperately wanted to write, but didn’t know how. The novel I thought would communicate whatever it was that I felt was so terribly important that it had to be shared with the world.

Is that a sign? Is that message still lingering somewhere inside me, looking for ways to escape the confines of my admittedly muddled mind? Thinking about this made me think of something else which I’ve often wondered about, but never really knew how to ask: is there one ‘ultimate’ novel in every writer? This novel – whatever it is – nags at me in the hours when I’m too tired to argue with it. I’ve ignored it for a decade for lack of technical skill, ambition and yes, for lack of courage. Now it’s back.

I think it’s something I need to write. I don’t know if it’s any good. Hell, I don’t even know what it is. It’s a difficult feeling to describe; I don’t really know what’s going to happen until I set my fingers to the keyboard and allow them to explain it to me. When I finish for a night, I have to read back to realize what it is I’ve just written. I remember feeling similarly about some poems which I’d written years before I understood them – as if somehow my subconscious had grasped what I’d been trying to say, but my conscious mind had lacked the faculties to translate the images and symbols.

I’m probably sounding very loony at the moment, so I’ll wrap this up after one last point. As I thought about this terribly-important-and-probably-terribly-terrible novel and what it means to me, all of the whining I’ve done about the publishing industry etc lurked behind a shadowy corner of my brain.

It wouldn’t really feel right, would it? If it’s something I feel I need to share, then why the hell should anyone else have anything to say about it? We(would-be writers) get so caught up in the world of publishing, agents and editors that I think we often lose sight of what this is all about; getting your words out to the world. For better or worse, that’s what we’re all in this for. To tell the world whatever it is we feel we have to say.

So, I’ll be ‘publishing’ it here on this blog as I write it, chapter by chapter. It might be great, it might be horrible – I don’t know. I’m not looking for advice, writing hints or helpful tips – it’s just something I want to say. I have the day off tomorrow, so I’ll throw what I have so far up then and continue updating it as I can.