Saturday, November 14, 2009

na.. no... wri... mo...

My good friend Emily recently pointed me toward an interesting site: http://www.nanowrimo.org/. I would link to her blog or something at this time, but she's very internet Amish -- not even a Facebook account.

Anyway, the point is, November is National Novel Writing Month (or at least the site says it is) and Emily is totally writing a novel. That surprised me. See, we were talking over the Tim Tam slamming eating contest that Emily beats me at every year. She's better at eating melty Australian cookies, but I thought for sure I'd beat her at writing a novel. Very good for her.

So I told her I'm writing a novel too. It's not necessarily true, but if I tell her and then tell enough other people maybe it will happen. Probably not by the end of National Novel Writing Month, but in the definite specific future. I've actually been meaning to for years and I have several different ideas in my head.

Here's the important truth: I dislike the way things exist here on Planet Earth. The way culture and society and stuff has evolved over the past 20 years tasks me quite a bit. Feelings and attitudes are rotten and simply wrong. Yes, there's lots of good, perhaps too much to count or measure, but I simply think the world needs much more.

Now here's the most conceited thing I'll probably ever say: the world inside my head is far more wonderful than the world outside of my head. I'm constantly (annoyingly) doing silly filmy or internety things sorta for fun and sorta for pride. I think though, that the biggest reason I do all these silly things is because I'm trying desperately to translate the good stuff in my head into some kind of reality. I know many people must feel the same way. I want to think I'm creative, but even if I'm not, it doesn't stop the compulsion to create. It's absolutely something I HAVE to do.

Of course compulsion and ability are two very very very different things. As far as I know, the only thing I'm naturally good at is sarcasm. I'll write that book though -- even if I have to painstakingly chisel every word.

3 comments:

Laura Lee said...

Most of us want to be creative and create things to make the world outside of us more closely resemble the world inside.

I create all the time. Even before Elder Uchtdorf told me to.

Monica said...

Jon, I'm really happy to hear that you'll be writing a novel. And in an attempt to sway your creativity a little bit, I just want to say that I desperately hope you're planning on a graphic novel.

Craig Barlow B. said...

Jon, if you wrote a novel, I would read it. You can count on me. I've got this really good idea for a novel about 2 underestimated but determined humanoids taking a magic ring to be destroyed in Mount Doom so they can kill Sauron.