My book is on that final stretch, it's just this really long final stretch. The good news is that I know how it ends. It's funny that I could have been confused to how an autobiographical book ends, but I was. I knew what needed to be wrapped up, I just didn't know how. I know my themes, it's just going back and elaborating upon them that has to be done. I knocked the ending (sadly, only the ending) of my terrible first novel out of the park, I expect no different here. So now I know how to wrap it up. I know and knowing is a bitch. Writing willy nilly is now out of the picture because I can see the WHOLE picture and so my brain is smoking and I'm looking at 180 pages that needs to be 225 and I'm trying to fill the gaps and fill them perfectly. I have to know my book inside and out, basically. I have to go into a hole, I think.
Tomorrow is a big day for the book... a lot of weight lifted... but that's all I can say. Tomorrow relieves some of the pressure.
I hope to be on nitpicking status with this thing next month. I want it done and combed. June 15th sounds like a good date, because it's my father's own book deadline.
Chuck Palahniuk wrote an essay on his site about book structure and it was very, very assuring. I've been thinking of Ribcage as a novel for some time, but a novel of stories... he called it a "quilt" structure. The sum equals more than the parts. A little reassuring. What's more, he said the first time he saw it done was in Douglas Coupland's Generation X... the first time I saw it done was in Coupland's Life After God.
I'm looking forward to having more time to focus on Ribcage when this book is finished. I have many big ideas that I've been putting off and putting off. The great thing is that everything is interchangable, expendable when it comes to the whole project. When I'm finished, the weak can disappear and the strong can be dispersed, as long as they aren't necessary to the plot and there will be one of those... plots. The seeds of the plot are already there, you just don't know that yet.
I am also going to start revising the stories as I go. Old stories on the site may soon be noted as revised on the archive page... better to make everything stronger as I go, then to overwhelm myself later.
Better to have stronger pieces for submission to more and more magazines. Not to mention, I am going to actively participate in Chuck Palahniuk's writing workshop, where I receive critique and criticism and can work toward getting a piece in an anthology book at the end of the year, introduced by Chuck himself.
These are my goals for this year.
To finish this book.
To bring Ribcage to that next level.
To try my damndest at getting in that Chuck anthology.
And if life is smooth sailing... to start work on my more traditional Ribcage prequel novel. The one about Jonathon. The one I've been taking photos for.
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