College Smells Funny

When I was younger, I never wanted to be anyone else. Well, that's a lie. I used to spend hours pretending I was Link from the Legend of Zelda on his never-ending princess-saving quest. And on more than one of my birthdays, I wished that I would turn into Garfield - the cat, not the dead president - as soon as I blew out the candles on my cake. But the point is, I never wanted to be anyone else who was real. I never wanted to trade lives with sports stars or actors or scientists or leather-panted rockers.

Looking back on it now, I sometimes think I used to be an idiot.

All I seem to do these days is wish I were someone else, someplace else, doing something infinitely more exciting and rewarding. Right now, I'm in a study-carrel in the basement of the Purchase College library wishing I was still in college. And I hated college.

Sometime in my early-to-mid twenties I guess I just lost the will to accept myself for who I am and my life for what it is. I think it was right around the time I realized, I mean actually began to understand, that the only thing I can be, in the end, is whatever it is I make myself into. And making yourself into something, into anything - baker, butcher, businessman, beloved - that's really hard to do.

I kind of wish it would just happen already. That I wouldn't have to work at it and I'd just turn into something or someone. I'd have made something of myself without doing anything at all. And I guess I can do that, just sit around and wait for my life to fall into my lap. But I'm pretty sure if I did that, before I knew it, I'd have made myself into a bum. And I'm pretty sure I'd be better off as me now as me as a bum.

Still, how much cooler would life be if I were Ed Norton instead? 8 million, that's how much.

Writing a Novel: Parte the Firste (and possibly the laste)

John Steinbeck did this thing when he was writing East of Eden: each day, before he began work on the story, he wrote a letter to his editor, Pascal Covici. It was a sort of a warm up, a stretching of the mind-muscles, and if the end result is anything to go by, it was an incredibly good idea. I don't know anyone with a name as cool as Pascal Covici, but I do have a blog now, so I figured, why not put it to good use?

I've been writing this so-called novel for too long now, and today I'm about to set off on another unexpected tangent. It may result in this three-times-a-week slog becoming even more grueling, or it might end up making the story into exactly what I've been struggling to make it since I first had the idea: finished.

The idea I had last night is a bold one - compressing three semi-realized characters into one hyper-real super-character, the likes of which hasn't been seen in literature since Theodore Geisel introduced us to this fine fellow. Well, maybe not quite that bold. Still, it's big enough for me to be afraid of it. And that's always a good sign, right? But the problem is that it requires rewriting. And rewriting and rewriting. In fact, if I follow through with this idea, it will be my 3rd time drastically rewriting the first 50 pages of Part II. If it comes to a 4th time, I think I might cry.

But here I am, enamored of the idea. What's a boy to do but follow it down a brambly path? And now it's getting late. I need to start working for real. Today an outline to see how crazy my plan might be. Tomorrow? Self-destruct mode begins anew.