That's a Novel Idea

[jackshoegazer]

Yet another long night to burn away... I never got around to writing last night. It will just have to wait until I'm finished with that book, "earthly powers." I'm almost finished, it's winding down, and like the rest of it, I have no idea what to expect next. I'm finding it most enjoyable to read a book that I knew absolutely nothing about before I read it. No expectations whatsoever. It's almost as good as having a preconcepted expectation completely blown asunder. The book follows the exploits of one Kenneth Toomey, a British novelist, play and screen writer. It has really made me realize that I should be writing more than I am. I have at least two or three decent ideas for novels every week, and rarely do I even write down the idea let alone start making plans for them. I sorely need one of those tiny pocket notebooks, the infamous writer's notebook, to keep my little ideas in, with a tiny little pen to jot said ideas and notes into the aforementioned tiny notebook. This French mystery writer I heard about, whose name I can't remember off hand, used to clip bizarre articles from the newspapers and keep them in a file until it was time to write another book, and then he would lay all the articles out and find a way to connect all those disparate stories into one coherent, if not absurd plot. He was known for breaking all the rules of writing a mystery. For instance, Don't introduce new characters after the first 1/3 of the book. He had a book where the killer in this particular mystery wasn't introduced until the last chapter. There were many more examples, but alas, I cannot remember them off hand. This mystery author has an apparent cult following, and his books have been out of print for years and years now. Several publishers are looking into reprints and translations and such, but no one seems to know who owns the rights to the material any longer, as the man's family seems to have vanished from the planet. That could be a plot of a book in itself... a literary agent's hunt around the world for the long-lost relatives of a famous writer. It could be a great farcical goose chase, absurd and romantic, filled with mystery and intrigue. Some day.