Thumper Thinks Out Loud

So.

Last night I printed out what I'd written for my NaNo novel, and began to read, thinking I would start re-writing, and adding to each far-too-short chapter, with editing to follow in 4-6 months.

You know the old saying about train wrecks that you can't help but slow down to look at?

That's my NaNo novel. It's a giant trainwreck, horrible and awful and bloody and gross, but I could not stop looking at it. I cringed when reading the opening, I groaned and snorted and rolled my eyes at my own literary prowess, and I laughed at places that were not supposed to be funny. It's a what the hell is this??? piece of Junque, so bad that one has to keep reading.

It's a repairable train wreck, so once I pick away the blood and guts and assorted pieces of broken Amtrak, I think I'll be able to read it without laughing at the horror of it.

Maybe.

I get to a certain point in all my work where I absolutely hate it. Face it, you can only read something so many times before it seems like the author committed a literary mortal sin. It does matter if it's something I wrote. In the rewrites for Finding Father Rabbit--probably the book I'm most satisfied with and that has garnered the best reviews--I wound up reading that sucker over 20 times, and by the 13th or 14th I wanted to barf all over it.

I have a few manuscripts tucked away that are still awful after several rewrites, and they'll never see the warmth of print, their fictitious glory nestled between a spiffy 4 color paperback cover. I pull them out once in a while, just to laugh at myself.

So. I think I'll take my print-out over to the library, where I will sit and begin to pick away at the scabs already forming on my bloodied literary trainwreck. I might see Library Bob, I'll probably see Krinkle Kris (lady who sits there and pays her bills the first Sunday of every month, it seems...she brings everything in a giant paper bag, and between the bag and the little cellophane windows on the envelopes, she creates quite a bit of irritating and annoying noise) and I might even get something accomplished before becoming distracted by something shiny.

No, I don't know what might be shiny in the library.

Maybe someone will have dropped a quarter, and I'll find it.

That would be spiffy.