“Those old legendary heroes may not have sat around like us drinking cold coffee and tapping steadily at their keypads, but for them—and for us—it’s the journey that’s the thing. That’s where the fun is.”

So, while I’m having fun churning out the words for my Nanowrimo novel I cannot think of a more boring idea than to keep giving you a blow by blow of the process. Therefore I thought that I would start a new category on my blog dealing with what I am reading.

Why?

Back to Jonathan Stroud. Poking around on his website I found his advice for unpublished writers which is:

• Practise: Write as much and as often as possible.

• Experiment: Try as many different kinds of writing as you can.

• Read: As above – as much and as widely as you can.

• Persevere: (i.) Don’t be disheartened by ideas and projects that don’t work out. I’ve got zillions of half-finished things in boxes, assembled over many years. Individually they may not have been any good, but together they pushed me in the right direction.
  (ii.) When you’re confident you’ve got something worth showing, send your material to several publishers at once, so you don’t waste time if it’s rejected. But check to make sure these publishers actually do the kind of book you’re proposing! Don’t worry if you get rejections, but listen to any advice.

So I’m going talk a bit about what I read to help me process it a bit better. Basically giving it another thought before I move on to the next book or before I reread it, again.

At the moment I am reading Michael Chabon’s Summerland. I’ll start there and then see where it goes. In addition to just writing about books it also gives me a chance to promote some books I find to be inspiring, good or sometimes deliciously dreadful.

Note: If you don’t care what I read or what I think about the books that I read. Thanks for passing by.

I am posting it here pretty much as I wrote it a year ago, as a rough draft of a story on which I was feeling the way forward on the half figured out plot.

Clea, who was the first person to comment on my blog (for which I want to thank her) feel the following about the writings that I post:

In all honesty the stories presented on your site are abysmal both in content and construction.

Self-indulgence is not a crime, but it is, in this instance, exceedingly arrogant.

I feel slightly different from her in how I understand self-indulgence and arrogance. But be that as it may. I have chosen to present rough writing on a public platform. I am inviting you to see where I fail on my way to better writing. Enjoy the process if you want to.

Without further ado:

Draft Zero - Excerpt #3
Posted by Gerhi Janse van Vuuren on November 3rd, 2007

Pede managed half a block before a hand pulled him into another alley.
“Pede, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Pede sighed, silly girl.
“Lebibrity, I don’t have the time or the energy.”
She shakes her head, grabbing his shirt. “You don’t understand, it is very important that I talk to you.” Her face burned with the same furious intensity she had when she told hime they were married after they skinny dipped five years ago.
But that was when they were still in the orphanage. And he didn’t have time or energy for her fantasies now. Not now. Not today.
“Let me guess, it’s abou some sword.”
“I have to tell you about…”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Pede. A tear pooled in the corner of her eye.
“Who told you? I wanted to tell you.”
“Nobody told me anything.” shrugged Pede. It’s just this silly idea that floated around in my head and it came out.”
Lebibrity stamped her foot. “It’s not silly, it’s very, very, very serious.”
“Like the time when Matron Mandelen started turning into a river crocodile at night?”
“Pede.”
“Or the time there were demons under the floorboards of the orphanage?”
Lebibrity bit her lower lip. “Pede.”
“Or the time you vowed to bear me four children after we built a castle together?”
Lebibrity’s lower lip started trembling. A second tear pooled in the corner of her eye.
“Or the time you married me in a swimming hole at the river. Promising to love me forever and a day?”
Tears were streaming down Lebirbrity’s face. “Pede?”
“I’ve got to go.” Pede shuffled on. Behind him Lebibrity was leaning heavily against the wall. Her shoulders slowly shaking.
“Okay.” she sniffed “I don’t care. You can die out there if you don’t know, I don’t care anymore.”
Pede stopped. Should he listen to her, talk to her? He shook his head. He has had enough trouble in his life running of on her wild idea schemes. Not again. Not today. He shook his head, trying to clear the muddle in his head.
He shuffled of, a tear pooling in the corner of his eye.

What I posted a year ago as an extract from my 2007 Nanowrimo novel:

Draft Zero - Excerpt #2
Posted by Gerhi Janse van Vuuren on November 2nd, 2007

Piere Caliun was just out for a stroll with nothing really planned. He was planning to go to town later to see what he could pick up. But for now he was just walking around until he saw it. A whole truck. It wasnít there yesterday so it must have gotten stuck overnight.
And there was nobody there not a soul. So he could just go and and pick up stuff. Whatever people leave behind, they donít want right?
Piere Caliun scrambles into the cab digging around. Half a sandwich… an old grease rag… some clothes under the seat…
Oh, smelly, they would need a wash… and a mend…
A logbook. Slowly Piere reads:
“Cuct-non Tru-cking log-book com-plete a-f-ter each trip”
Not very useful then. Maybe his luck is not so good, there is nothing but rubbish in the cab. Wonder whatís on the back?
Piere Calliun scrambles onto the back of the truck. Ugh, more rubbish. He scratches through the rotting crates. Itís only compost, everything here is rotten. Bloody garbage truck, he thinks when he suddenly see something glittering.
“What have we here?”
His breathing speeds up as he kicks the rotting planks away to see better. “This might be something worthwhile.” He grabs hold of the shiny end.
“Bugger, it’s stuck.”
Iritation flashes through him as he plants his feets, taking hold with both hands and counts himself down “One, two and—”
The piece of metal pulls free with a rusty croak and Piere’s momentum lifts it up high over his head. The point touches the timeline, lighting it up across the valley. Some power flows back into Piereís arms and down into his body right down to the pit of his stomach it feels like somebody is pouring warm honey straight into his body. “Wooaahw! What a keeper.”

On word count I’m doing much better this year. Though at the moment I’m still steaming happily ahead very plotless and unorganised.

Reason #8: What’s Your Exit Strategy?

This got me thinking, in conjunction with where I was a year ago on my own writing journey. The thing is, I cannot be bumbling along with this for forever. I want to write novels professionally. In other words I want to make my fame and fortune as a fabulist. And if I cannot manage both then at least one of the two. Because I am not making much money anywhere else fortune would probably be more appreciated than fame.

So, in order to prevent myself from chasing fool’s gold for the next ten or twenty years, here is my commitment:

I am going to quit writing six months from today unless…

I have managed to write a novel that I can give to somebody to read.

This is a very strong commitment for me. I like having loose ends in the water I can drag up at any point and give some attention to. But if I do not manage to write a novel by end of April 2009 I am quitting.

Why? Because if I cannot do it now I won’t do it later and not doing it means I can’t sell it, get it published or for that matter figure out if is good enough to even try selling it at all. But I am not promising the following things:

• It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece
• It doesn’t have to be brilliant
• It doesn’t even have to be publishable or sellable

But it must be readable and it must be finished. From there I can then decide if it needs feedback, editing, a new angle, or just plain shopping around. Or it might be that I then decide it is not worth it and then I quit anyway. Doesn’t matter. What matter is that I am done with wanting to write a novel. I’m either writing a novel or I’m not.

At the moment I’m writing one using Nanowrimo as a springboard. Six months from now it is finished or I’m calling it quits.

1. I want to keep it slightly more hidden from public view in order to protect the creative process.
2. I am intent on creating a marketable manuscript and I want a novel with no publication question marks at the end.

But last year I did post what I wrote for the first three days so I am putting it out there again this year. I am writing something completely different anyway.

Draft Zero - Excerpt #1
Posted by Gerhi Janse van Vuuren on November 1st, 2007

“You” said Pede Cuctos looking down at the truck and putting his hands on his hips “are wasting my time.”
The front of the truck was sunk low, up to the axle in the mud. Pede Cuctos felt the weariness creep up on him as he gave an enormous sigh. Picking up a flat rock he stepped forward to release the truck.
“Bloody piece of metal had to get stuck on the line.”
The front of the truck was low in the soggy mud while the backside sat high and dry across the line. Determined Pede Cuctos got down on his knees in the mud, jamming the flat rock under the left front wheel.

“I was jutht taking an evening throll when I thaw you had a thpot of bother.”
The sudden disembodied voice startled Pede Cuctos and he banged his head on the side of the mudguard as he jerked upright. Reeling upright and whirling around he saw him standing incongruously standing behind him.
Just a man, wearing a brown suit, the rain pelting down on him. But he didnít seem to notice at all.
Steadying his head with one muddy hand, the other reaching for he truck Pede wasn’t sure if help have arrived.
“Do I know…”
His hand missed the truck and he flopped into the mud like a wet cloth slapping a rotten pumpkin.
The brown suited man turned and walked of to the back of the truck.
Donít leave, thought Pede as he scrambled up trying to follow after.
“Can you help me get the truck out?” he asked but as he hit the jelly jerk of the line he knew he wasnít heard at all.
It lasts only one step but the jelly stickiness felt wetter than the pelting rain, as if it oozed right through the marrow of your bones. Pede swallowed down his late lunch and stepped on almost stumbling into the brown suit on the other side.
His hand shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun he lifted the corner of the tarp on the back of the truck.
“How long have you been at thith? This ith beginning to thtink.”
Pede slapped himself on the forehead, mud mushed into his hair. “Just an hour or so on the other side.”
He knew half his load was beginning to spoil and there was nothing he could do about it, know what did he pack on the back again?
The eggs! Three thousand of them.
He looked underneath the truck. Between the back wheels a prophet spider had spun a web, that looks like about a weekís worth of spinning decided Pede.
A small fly was buzzing intermittendly, stuck, no real hope of making it. For a couple of seconds Pede Cuctos stared at the small fly, mesmerized.
He pulled himself up he turned to the front of the truck. “We’ve got to get moving and get the truck out.”
“We…I thee your bother but I jutht here to…”
“How did you get here, who are you?”
Pede stopped in front of the brown suit, his chest almost touching the man’s. Did he know him? He couldn’t quite make him out, he looked familiar in an almost, common way.
But he couldn’t look him into the eyes because the man seemed to find something interesting in a cloud floating lazily by.
“So, can you help me?”
“Well not quite. I am here to kind of athitht you but I can’t really do anything.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, I feel fine, why?”
“Then let’s get some rocks under the front wheels.”
Pede Cuctos turned and as he walked he pulled his breath expecting the jelly jerk of the line.
“Itíth not part of my jo-ooah twooeee aahoobeee…”
Pede stopped halfway into the timeline twisting around in the ooziness. It felt as if his stomach turned four times around by itself before whirling back the other way. The sun was setting fast, the moon shadow creeping across the truck, brown suit gone. of course he wouldn’t stick around half a day.
Stepping through into the rain nothing has changed. Bugger, he dug in the mud for the flat rock he had wedging under the wheel just now. It wasn’t there.
Wasting my time, thought Pede as he stepped of the road for another one. Picking up a flat rock like the first…
Picking up the same flat rock from the same spot a shiver runs down Pede’s back.
Shaking of the feeling of dread he turned back to the truck. “Bloody rain is soaking right through me. I’ll probably end up with a snorting cold too.”
“There’th thome good rockth up here!”
Pede jerked his head around as his leg dissapeared up to itís knee into soft mud. The rock slid from his hands banging on his knee before flopping over with a slow splat.
On the hill behind Pede brown suit was standing by a pile of rocks, his hands in his pockets, shoulders scrunched down as if he was trying to make himself smaller to avoid the rain.
“Thought you left long ago?”
“Juth got thome in…eh, I walked round the other thide. There’th a whole lot of utheful looking rockth up here, might help you get the…that thing out.”
He was kicking at a rock, not having much effect, not even trying to get his hands out.
“You a city boy? A little dirt on your hands wonít kill you, you know.”
“Well kind of, I don’t normally do thith, and the mud wathn’t menthioned at all…”
“Well then just stand out the way, let me get on with it.”
Poor city bugger must be lost laughed Pede. He actually looked pitifully out of place. As if somebody had placed a potted plant in the middle of the road. Except it knew something is going to run it over soon. And it knew it could’t go anywhere. and it was trying to make peace with it, but not quite succeeding.
Stopping from wedging the next rock under the wheel Pede looked up at brown suit, bent over in the rain. Kicking rocks with no effect, looking more and more out of place. He looked up and saw Pede was looking at him and flipped his head back embaressed like.
“Come look here!”
“What, more useful rocks?” smirked Pede.
“No, really, come have a look.”
A piece of metal was sticking out from the pile of rocks at an odd angle.
“Ah, that would really help if I can wedge it underneath the wheel.”
Pede grabbed the metal and dragged it out, it was odd shaped but it would do.
“You’re not thupothed to…”
“What, I’m trying to get the truck out. Are you helping or stopping me?”
“But if you thort of…”
“Sort of what?”
Pede pushed his left hand deep into the mud to feel where the wheel met the flat rock. Then he pushed the flat piece of metal in trying to find a space between to wedge it in. It went in smooth and then suddenly twisted knocking Pede over. Pulling his head from the mud with sucking thud Pede grabbed the piece of metal with determination. Iím going to get you in there. The metal twisted the other way.
“You piece of scrap.”
“O thhoot.”
The piece of metal buckled then whipped up like a spring loaded rabbit, whipping slowly in an unbelievable arc across the cab of the truck.
whoopwhipwhoopwhip…
Pede followed the slow curve until it hit the line above the truck.
For the first time in his life Pede saw the line. It lit up like a blue haze running left and right across the landscape, tearing across hills and through clumps of trees, curving round in the far distance.
And as he fell on his back he saw it curve over his head dissapear in the heavy clouds, suddenly doubling their effort to drown him in the downpour.
Oozing himself from the mud, Pede suddenly felt his right hand.
“I think I hurt my hand.”
Nothing.
“I think…” he looked around. Brown suit was gone. Probably walked around the other side.
He looked at his hand. It didn’t feel nearly as bad as it looked. In fact, he hardly felt a thing. From his wrist to the tip of his fingers the skin seemed to be peeled of, gone, nails and all.
Glad I’m not feeling that thought Pede as he passed out falling back in the mud like…well like a bloody wet cloth slapping into a rotting pumpkin.
The back left wheel gave a sigh as the rubber perished. The rusty rim sank down into the dust. The wrapped up small flies bobbed for a moment swaying in the cobwebs underneath the axle.

The writing is upon us
Posted by Gerhi Janse van Vuuren on October 31st, 2007

Nanowrimo starts tomorrow morning. My schedule says that somewhere between 00:01 and 23:59 tomorrow I have to bang out 2000 words. No sweat…

But just before that, a little bit more about why I am taking part in Nanowrimo. Have you ever read what people write about themselves and got to the line: “…and I always wanted to be a writer…” Well, to prevent myself from writing that line I will write the following:

I have always tried avoiding being a writer

What do you mean? Well, when I was twelve I wanted to be a writer, after wanting to be an attorney. When I was 17 I wanted to be a writer, after being a movie director. When I was 21 I wanted to be a writer after being a Psychologist. When I was 24 I wanted to be a writer after being an artist. When I was… you get the picture?

I have been interrupting my writing throughout my whole life, trying to figure out what I should be doing before I become a writer. And ever time I did that I interrupted the writing that I was busy with. So I never gathered any momentum. I never finished a novel.

Itís not that I havenít written anything. I have written a number of plays. A lot of essays and academic paper. A Masters dissertation and a lot of other stuff.

But as a novel or fiction writer I am not want Randy Ingermanson called pre-published, I am pre-written. Randy gives four levels of where you might be as a writer. I think he left of a fifth level.

I am a pre-writer

I have thought about writing novels, I have bought pens, wrote outlines, read some books but I have never sat down and actually wrote a novel. I am a ’someday’ writer in that “some day I would like to be a writer”. I like the idea of being a writer but I am not… not at the moment.

But thirty days from now I will be a beginner, with the draft of a beginner novel done. In the next thirty days I intend to change myself from being a pre-writer, to becoming a pre-published writer.

Now on the edge of my seat,

Gerhi Janse van Vuuren

Reading this today give me much pause for thought. Mainly two things pop up.

1. I am not a pre-writer anymore. I have written too much in the past year to see myself as such.
2. I am yet to finish that first draft. 11 Months down the line and I still haven’t done it.

This time I’m sitting back and enjoying the ride.

Okay not very clever, intelligent, engaging, humorous or amazing writing but still writing. And that is writing as in constructing words into some kind of meaningfulness, not scibbling with sharp things on papers. Still writing.

So, I know I can write but can I write a novel?

You should think I should now by now. Roughly more than a year ago I said to myself that if I don’t get down with it write that novel now I might just never do it. So I did it. Or more accurately, I gave it a stab. A couple of stabs. Made a righ pincusion out of it from all the stabbing.

When I started stabbing it I came across Nanowrimo. Sounded like a good idea. Tried it. Failed it. Not because I didn’t keep trying but because I gave up. Last November was pretty much a hectic month. I still had a job. There was deadlines and stuff. Writing a novel nobody would ever read just didn’t seem as important.

I think I got to about 20 thousand words. In the first week. It should have been a piece of cake.

Since I have left my job, moved across country and have been working on giving novel writing a serious stab. Have been stabbing it it for a couple of months. Best I got to so far was 30 thousand. That is on one story. I have another one sitting at about 20 thousand, a couple at roughly 10 thousand and a number of ideas ranging from a couple of hundred words to a thousand or two. All in all I guess I have written a fair sized novel. In word count that is, not in the sense that it is one comprehensive story.

I think I have been trying too hard. This year I am giving Nanowrimo another stab.

50 000 words.

One month.

Piece of cake.

P.S. This is my Nanowrimo page

You’d think people would be glad. But with what happened yesterday you have to wonder what people are thinking. I mean the arrogance.

So we were just finishing up at that purple coffee shop downtown. No, not the new one on the corner. Ghastly table cloths that new place. If you put your fork down you can’t find it again. It just gets lost in the pattern. Last time I was there I found three forks on my table, absolute shoddy service if you ask me.

Oh yes. We were at that purple place. I can never remember the name. Too typical a coffee shop name. Don’t you think that they all sound pretty much alike too? Same with the coffee. I am convinced they all buy exactly the same brand from the same wholesaler. Some coffee rep probably visits all the same coffee shops and in the end the coffee at home tastes better.

But it is not like we go for the coffee. It is more for the experience. It is like an outing for me and Robert. We talk a bit, have a coffee and cake and just relax a bit away from home. I mean, is that too much too ask for, a good experience?

After yesterday I don’t know if I’ll ever go to a coffee shop again. It just spoiled it for me.

The service was of course typical. We couldn’t hear a word the waiter mumbled while he tried to remember what cakes they have by staring at the cake display. We had to order our cakes by colour. Robert had a brown cake and I had an orange one. I had a bite of his and except for the colour it could have been the same cake. All icing and cream and no flavour. And don’t ask about the coffee.

Why is it that you order cake and coffee at the same time and they have to make the coffee and it ends up on your table fifteen minutes before the cake? I mean they only have to slice the cake. The knife can’t be that blunt. And then the coffee is so tepid there is no way you can make it last till your cake eventually arrives.

So after cold coffee and cardboard cake the bill came and it was of course wrong. Three coffees and two pies. Go figure.

Robert had to do his civic duty of course and was tipping the waiter generously. Good thing he had his walking stick with him. He can be so elegant in these things. Always thought he would have been a wonderful father but you know about me and children.

So Robert has the waiter with his back to the cake display giving him the one tip after the other, all perfectly punctuated with a whack of his walking stick.

“You have to ask if we want hot or cold milk young man.”

WHACK

“Learn the names of the cakes on display for pity sake.”

WHACK

“Enunciate, o please, please enunciate.”

WHACK

You could see that he really appreciated the tips. Poor waiters. You know most people just don’t make the effort. Explains a lot. And Robert was really on a roll. I could see he was enjoying the experience as well.

Then this guy walked in of the street and just took over. I mean he wasn’t a customer. He had no right. And he wasn’t the manager for sure. What would the manager know of service anyway?

He just flashed this badge in Robert’s face and dragged the waiter out back. Robert was speechless. He just stood there. I had to shake him by the shoulder to get his attention. I said “Who was that Robert?”

And he said “Department of Service Affairs, Food Division.”

I know, it doesn’t make any sense. Who knew they even existed. I said to Robert “You can’t let him do that. You are a private citizen, you pay your taxes.” So we went out back to straighten this out and we found him beating the waiter to a granular death with a soggy coffee filter.

I mean the arrogance. Who gives the government the right to interfere in our tipping? And then they have the gall to hand out such a big tip, totally undeserved. Where does that leave us?

You done? Me too. Ghastly coffee right. Told you, same rep, same wholesaler. Do you want to tip or should I? No, it’s fine, let me tip, I’ve got my ice pick around here somewhere.

Unitlex, the helmsman, had her eyes fixed in the middle distance behind the windshield. Her knuckles were white as she held onto the wheel, her upper arms shaking like a fat burning treadmill as she struggled to hold her steady. She spoke through a clenched jaw. “Speedwobble captain.”

Finding nothing else Captain Lexwig wiped his hands on his trousers. It didn’t look like it was going to be a good morning. Not if the day starts with him losing his first cup of coffee. The Super Semi ran on re-converted planetary plasma. Captain Lexwig ran on coffee. He lurched over to the machine for a refill. “Well stop doing it.”

“It’s that last planet we swerved past. The atmosphere created whirling turbulance which threw of the shocks.”

Captain Lexwig grabbed a cup from the stack and shoved it under the funnel. Hot coffee splurted out, splattering over his other hand.

Captain Lexwig dropped his second cup of coffee for the day. The day was not starting out well. Grabbing hold of the coffee machine as if he wanted to ingest his poison through osmosis he snapped over his shoulder. “I don’t care, just stop doing it!”

Unitlex’s arms were still shaking heavily. Sweat were dripping from her brow and her eyes had grown the size of dwarf planets. She sounded scared. “I’m trying captain but she’s fighting me.”

Captain Unitlex grabbed hold of the condiments executive’s shoulder and shoved him towards the helm. “Help her.”

Donix wrapped his dishcloth tightly round his hand, staring like a meteor caught in the headlights. “Me?”

Captain Lexwig was losing his patence. “Now!”

Another shudder ran through the Super Semi. With effort Captain Lexwig stopped the coffee machine from tumbling of the counter.

This time Unitlex shouted out. “What was that?”

Captain Lexwig lost his patence. “Pull over.”

“Here? But we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“I don’t care. If you don’t stop you’re going to end up with a planet up your ass.”

Unitlex eased the Super Semi to coast to a standstill. She lurched like a drunked comet as she came to a stop. With a sigh she hugged the wheel flipping switches and the whine of the engines slowly died down.

Captain Lexwig whirled around knocking his third cup of coffee against the side of the machine. Now the fear was in his eyes. “No, don’t switch the engine of.”

Unitlex snapped up straight but before she could respond the phone rang.

Captain Lexwig took three dep breaths before he picked up the receiver. He listened for a while before he could speak, his face pulled in a grimace as the acid built up in his stomach. “….I know President… sunbathing by the pool… dark yes… we had to pull over… probably a flat… no we have no idea how long for.”

Nad Downser came back from market having sold nothing. He smashed his honey pots to pieces on the road and back in camp he beat Dunkeld. “Might ha’ me some joy today.” he said.

Dunkeld walked with a limp that whole winter. And after when it gets cold his hip act up.

The bottom fell out of the wild honey market because the bees produced foul muck. The westerly winds was huffy that year and toxic dust fell like rusty rain. On the Gora Gora flats the open silt mines was stripped from any viable product. It was eroded in waves and gathered in the upper atmosphere.

The sunsets were magnifecent that year.

Rivalry in wild honey production would have been manageable if it wasn’t also for the bees gone sterile from their own muck.

Nad Downser went to market with only a quarter harvest the following season. Dunkeld wasn’t good with explainin’ things but he could see a beating a mountain away. Dunkeld wasn’t in camp when Nad came back so Nad beat up on himself. Never left that camp again.

Walking through a field of green marrows and Dunkeld heard a sound like a baby crying. Not that Dunkeld would have known what a baby crying sounded like. He had never heard a baby cry. He was the son of a Hamback honey gatherer and he had no mother or siblings.

Dunkeld found a spotted dog pup in that marrow field.

Now any man would have killed the vile filth a spotted dog was but not Dunkeld. He was not burdened by the prejudice of polite society so he took the spotted dog with him. The pup was barely a week or two old but it drew its first blood on that same day.

“The westerly winds sweeping across the Gora Gora flats had an underestimated effect on the structure of society. The nature of who we are as a people were changed by the mere movement of air.”

Theceme Bassa