Day 68: END OF FIRST NOVEL

Finished it at 49,903 words.  If I continue to do a novel a month, even though my idea of novel of course it a big series of shit not happening.

I saw 30 Minutes or Less, or whatever that movie was called, in theaters.  Just now I saw a preview for it.  I just noticed how lazy of writing it is.  First of all, (hear me out here), no pizza place uses "30 Minutes or less or it's free" as a tagline anymore, and it's unclear whether they ever did in the first place.  What that is is a way to add urgency to a completely boring ordeal of delivering food.  On top of this, they put a bomb on the main guy, this means he's also forced to action.  That just seems like the easiest way to get anyone going.  On top of that, the love interest happens to be the main characters best friends sister, and she happens to live within walking distance of his friends workplace, and he has to admit he's in love with her because not only is he going to die from the bomb but she's going to move away.  That's the laziest writing there is, it's all forced circumstances.  That's lazier than my writing, and they have actors and a huge budget to pull it off with.
          I should extrapolate this and write a persuasive essay, and maybe watch that movie again but probably not.  Also, Asiz Ansari is pretty funny but comic relief also seems like an excuse to avoid real story.  Done with that.  I'm going to try to figure out some stupid concept like that to write about this month, maybe a guy has a disease where he'll only live one more day?  Or he loses his job under false pretenses and has to kill his boss for some reason?  That's another one, the classic Strangers On a Train ripoff, Horrible Bosses, where one of the bosses (Jennifer Aniston) literally plays no part in the story at all other than via late night phone calls after the initial premise. 
          Have to continue on my bitching tirade.  The reason my generation of writers sucks is because they don't like conflict, I'm pretty sure.  Think about current seasons of the Simpsons compared to older ones.  It started off much funnier because it was a family drama, and it said something about the world we lived in.  There'd be episodes that were uncomfortable because Homer was a bad parent, or Bart would be in the hospital, or Bleeding Gums Murphy was dying, etc.  You had an investment in the characters, and the dilemma they were facing is what the jokes would be about.  It wasn't just a series of shitty pop culture gags, and although the episodes wouldn't always resolve cleanly or adequately the driving force would be the plot.  I used to hate plot and conflict too, but I'm thinking I have to become involved with it in real life as well as writing to gain "experience."  This is the postmodern world.
          Writing book (Warriners) suggests that I write expository essays about things I care about.  Also suggests that what I "know about" and what I "care about" are the same.  So I should figure out a conclusive point to make about... stuff.  Let's start to care more guys.
          Ok anyway brainstorm brainstorm brainstorm.  This time I'm going to at least come up with a stupid premise and let it run, and I'll be nice enough to include my brainstorming here for whatever superior writer that's reading this.

Biggest trick is to find someone to write about who is more exciting than me.  Some quote from Mark Twain about comfortability ruining everything. 

Brainstorming:

They turn his cable

He has ran out of his “nest egg”, money after moving out that he had accumulated

Situations that would add urgency:

Can’t check powerball numbers

Internet connected to cable?

They’ll find out he is out of money because cable is switched

Friends think he’s reliable, has it together

Has to face silence in earnest

Things that could happen to this guy:

Discovers box in attic

Starts spending a lot of time in attic

Has to decide what to do with his dog

            “Is it working now?”  Hank called down from the top of the roof, screwing with the satellite dish with the tried and true method of shaking it until it worked.  He had the sneaking suspicion that it had finally been shut off, it was months since he had paid the bill and even his “pal” at the cable company couldn’t stretch out the service any longer. 

            “No, just fuzz.  Come on man, goddamn it, the game is starting.”  Arnie called with cupped hands over his mouth from the lawn, shivering in bare feet and Peoria Wildcats shorts.  “If you had cable atleast we could just switch it over to regular TV, you had to get the stupid fucking thing where nothing works unless everything works.”

            “If you don’t like it you can go home, you worthless vulture.”  Hank called down, his fluffy blue slippers slipping on the roof shingles.  He steadied himself by grabbing the dish, which made the picture cut out completely.  He heard a loud groan from inside, the fuzzy snow on the screen turning into a black stretchy rectangle.

            One of Arnie’s meathead football player friends wearing a plain white trucker hat pushed through the front door cursing under his breath and gave Hank the two handed impatience gesture.  He pulled a Marlboro out of his breast pocket, placed it between his lips and struck a kitchen match against the cement walkway.  He stood silently, watching Charles and shaking his head disapprovingly at intervals.

            Charles screwed with it again, repressing the sudden urge to rip the thing off of the roof and cast it down onto the lawn.  First the car breaks down and I don’t have the money to get a new tire, then the spare doesn’t fit.  Next, my parents split after 37 years.  Then, these ingrates invite themselves over.  He didn’t have time to think out each thought independantly, but jumbled together they grinded in his brain on a continuous cycle.  They were facts, he was a grown man and he had to start facing the ugly truths of real life.

            “I’m out of here.”  The muscle head stated to himself loudly for everyone else to hear.  He stomped out his marlboro under his heel on the sidewalk, leaving a skidmark of ash on the sidewalk.  He climbed into his green Oldsmobile, fired up the engine and ignored Arnie’s affable waves.

            “Yeah, I bet I need a new one.”  Hank set his feet back behind him and slid down the roof to where he had the ladder stationed.  “You can get up here and try if you want but I’m pretty sure it’s done for.”

            Hank climbed down the ladder, seeing through the window the group of random acquantances switching the Xbox 360 on.  The skinny one with the eyebrows put on the headset, the fat one with the glasses stood up from the couch and instantly forgot what he had stood for, sitting back down.  Officious diplomatic Arnie went back in before Hank reached the bottom of the ladder, and soon they were all sucked into the TV. 

            “You know you guys can all go to Willies and watch it,”  Hank hung his windbreaker on the banister after pushing through the door.  The place stunk, ash and smashed cans covering the surface of the living room, staining the white carpet.  Just a few years ago I was making the money to afford this place, Hank thought.  I could atleast still take good care of it.

            “Did someone say something?”  The one with the headset joked, eliciting a line of chuckles.  Hank went around with a garbage bag, collecting beer cans, fast food wrappers and occasionally blocking the screen to protests. 

            “You guys are wasting your lives,”  Hank said, feeling like the native american with the tear on his cheek in the famous PSA.  “Atleast sports have a sense of camraderie, you guys are just… forget it.”

            They paid no attention to Hank, who looked around for his vaccuum.  The sudden urge to clean consumed him, he couldn’t get his head clean until the place was clean.  He wiped off the coffee table under the framed duplication of Monet’s Bridge At Giverney, took the carpets outside and shook them out, swept the hardwood floors in the kitchen.  He turned the radio on and navigated through televangical preachers and Republican pundits, eventually reaching the game.

            The voice of good old Teddy Hunter described what was going on in the stands, his own difficult day arriving to the stadium, a conversation he had with an old friend who just passed away, and then finally said a couple of things about the game.  Hank was born and raised a football fan, but now it was all just nostalgia to him.  It reminded him of his youth, when Teddy Hunter was a much more articulate and focused anouncer and when his dad would sit with him and his brother by the fireplace, insisting that history was being made.  They listened as Dougy Arnold decimated the rival Bighorns secondary, securing a pass in the endzone which Teddy famously called, “The big one.”

            Now, Teddy Hunter called every catch The Big One, it had been trademarked and put on T-Shirts.  No one listens to the radio, my TV is out, and before long he was going to have to sell the house.

            Hank pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and listened to the game.  He thumbed through the classified section in the newspaper, dejected by any mention of need for experience immediately.  He opened the fridge, the milk had gone bad, he instantly recognized the smell.  He tossed it out and it hit the bottom of the trash can, there was no bag in it and the milk poured into the bottom of the thing.  There were repeated shouts from the living room, it almost sounded like they were reacting to a football game, but a group of audacious men engaged in competition usually had the same ferverous reaction to whatever was going on.

            He pushed the sliding door open to the porch, stepping out back onto the patio.  This was the part of the house he regretted investing in.  At the time, he envisioned many cheery barbeques taking place on the spacious veranda, he hadn’t yet considered the pain in the ass of cleaning a pool.  A supine valley stretched into office buildings, an artificial slope covered in astro turf.  The neighbors on his left and right had less extravagant yards, but each had great tall wooden fences that made their dwellings feel like castles.

            Hank called the satellite company, his payments were overdue, they couldn’t take his word for it any longer.  His friend wasn’t working for the company anymore, he had been fired for reasons they wouldn’t provide.  The snooty operator sounded like they revelled in the power of this job. 

            He watched the manmade woods from his patio chair, staring at the dark blue hue of the pool.  Some sort of plant was springing up from the top like it was a giant petri dish.  Leaves fell off of the oak tree above him in an endless stream, aiming for the pool but mostly falling short.  Hank could hear the game from inside, the Wildcats were already down by fourteen, a couple of rushing touchdowns.  Teddy insisted on mispronouncing the opposing quarterbacks name, insisting that the G was silent in Gagne.  The frivolity of it all hit home.