Yet when the Official David Barron Biography comes out, I want it noted that I was Reading (that is, critically thinking about the structure, themes, and meaning of fiction) for ten years before I started Writing. That is to say, I read my First Million Words well before I was a teenager, and then I rolled into making sense of it all and figuring out Why and How a particular something was good. That this was for lack of any video games or (for the most part) television, this fact shall be glossed over in the History.
But, most importantly, I didn't start writing until I had built up a body o' experience. Success (some), Failure (much), Exploration (plenty), Disillusionment (just enough), Wearing a Tie (too many), Washing Dishes For Food (twice), Living in the Lap of Luxury (briefly), General Debauchery (pleasant), Stand-up Comedy (boo!), Getting Chased Out Of An Entire Country (sortof). In short, Going Everywhere, Doing Everything and Talking to Everybody, while at the same time developing my innate talent for mythomania towards a useful goal instead of pure self-aggrandizement. But there's got to be some aggrandizement, people, so it might as well be of me.
All that's to say, now I can set empathy on High and draw from the feedbag of my own reading and experience to inform my Writing. It wasn't too long to wait, and there was plenty to do. And there still is.
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Now that I've convinced Blogger to cooperate with the help of Feedburner, I can present to you a new feature, most likely irregular: excerpts from my recordings of completed pieces. They'll be about thirty seconds (about one paragraph block of text) long and you must excuse the sound quality. If they're not integrated into the main body of the post, they'll be in a little subsection like this until I get around to making a more elegant package for them. Thoughts are appreciated re: site design, if that's your thing.
From "Moving In, Moving On":
042 - MovingInMovingOn 1
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It's blog post 42! Let's have some Absurdity to go along with the new site design! Everything is ultimately meaningless except the quest for meaning itself. Time Travel is the only way to see the future. There's one universe for each possible vibration of every atom. Your mother doesn't really think you're a genius, she's just glad you moved out of the house.
Albeit temporarily.
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2000 words? Yes
Short Story "The Language of Ice Cubes" - not quite done
Book "Lived Too Long To Die"
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Reading - "The Hobbit" (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Nice new layout, David. I particularly like the subtle graphical insinuation that only women with open mouths should call and/or e-mail you.
ReplyDelete-bn
I like to pile on the subtle, just in case somebody misses it. In this case, it's meant to imply a certain talkativeness as opposed to any other characteristic.
ReplyDeleteWhat made you decide on writing?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story, David! You really wrote a million words in two years though? That's extremely impressive.
ReplyDeleteWhy writing? The simple answer is it allows me to be my own boss, and I'm by far the best boss I've ever had. Even if I don't pay all that well.
ReplyDeleteA million words in two years is only 5 handwritten A4 sheets a day (see, that doesn't sound so hard now, does it?). I'd say it took about two hours total throughout the Outside day, idle minutes snatched from the jaws of the reaper, with a full hour every night. My suggestion: Travel exclusively by public transportation & taxis, and don't take a book or iPod, but rather a notebook. You'll write out of boredom until it becomes habit.
Well, I also started writing as a teenager, but since in my case it turned out I needed to write TWO Million Words of Dreck before I became any good, it's just as well I started early.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe if I have bothered to learn spelling before I started trying to write novels, I would have written less dreck.
Learning spelling is always a good start, but I'd say two million words written in close proximity to a dictionary is a good way to practice.
ReplyDelete