Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Day 2 etc.

Today is the second day of my 10-15 day novel. Today at 6:11 PM I have 10,282 words. I started today at 11:00 and took a break to go running again. I drank a whole pot of coffee and ate some dried cranberries and bran cookies and a couple handfuls of oatmeal cereal. I am hungry now and feel very buzzed out. I am going to go eat four turkey dogs with a little Mexican cheese and hot sauce and then I may either stop for the day or keep going. I wrote more today in less time than yesterday.

This novel is beginning to take form. I feel energized writing each sentence. I do not feel like I am writing shit I will have to delete. I am finding things out while I am writing.

The novel is about a house. There is a family in the house and none of them know what is going on. The mother mows the lawn over and over again. The family members get lost in the house. The 8 year old son has a red cell phone that receives phone calls. The mailbox fills up with things and receives packages.

I think the house may be the same house as in the beginning of LOST HIGHWAY.

Last night I watched INLAND EMPIRE until the part where Laura Dern goes into the room full of women and they talk to her and then she goes through the window to Poland.

When she went to Poland I turned the movie off and tried to go to sleep but couldn't for several hours.

I am reading Johannes Goransson's A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE. I like it a lot.

I think this novel is also connected to Ol Dirty Bastard's NIGGA PLEASE. I think NIGGA PLEASE was recorded in a very short time also.

The working title for NIGGA PLEASE was BLACK MAN IS GOD, THE WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL.

I wish I could name my novel that.

People are very sensitive.

My ebook/chapbook PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE will be released this Friday. It looks really nice, I am very happy with it. Adam Robinson is doing some really awesome things with Publishing Genius which you can read about on his blog.

I will post links to it when it goes up and I think you will be able to order print copies for $4 or there will be an option to print them yourself. It will also feature original artwork by Lauren Bender.

There are other things coming up to talk about.

9 comments:

Ken Baumann said...

movin

Jeremy James Foxtrot Thompson said...

Again, you're productivity is staggering. I have a theory about it being linked to your mobile reading process, (the process wherein you seem to tend towards reading in motion (i.e. on treadmills, on hikes)). According to my theory, your mind generates new motion based receptors which turn thought into a kind of physical activity. This thought-as-physical-activity process then, in turn, conditions creative thought into a phenomenon directly linked to the physical act of typing.

Check out David Sudnow's "Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct." His hands learned to improvise jazz on the piano.

Nice work. I'll buy your book.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

jeremy, that's an interesting theory. i hadn't thought about it that way, though i've been thinking a lot about outside influences during time of work. i wonder how it could be measured and/or applied more efficiently. i will check out sudnow.

brandon said...

forehead scab

landscape teeth

Matt Bell said...

Good work so far, Blake-- Keep up that word count and you'll pass my three months of novel writing in a week or two.

Marcos said...

I'm jealous that you get to spend all day writing. Don't you have to work? How do you pay rent?

Even so, your writing productivity is mind-bending. On the days when I'm not having my brain and my heart crushed by full-time wage slavery, the most I can manage is around 2000 words in a 24-hour period.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i freelance and am between contracts right now. i also have a record label makes decent money, and some savings from years when i worked a lot more.

plus i have credit cards.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

but thanks for asking

Maya said...

lost highway freaks me the fuck out
that makes me excited for your novel