The Schedule

So as I plan this crazy idea, I know that I will need to keep a ridiculously strict writing schedule. Several people close to me have already doubted my ability to keep it up consistently. So I will clearly need a method of keeping track of how on schedule I am so that if I fall behind I now how much I need to do in order to catch up.

I feel as though I will need to plan this like a movie shooting script. I will have to know before each day, what is required of me to reach the next stage in the story.

I am going to keep a widget or gadget or something similar on top of the page to show what the current word count and where I should be based on how far into the year we are at any time.

The plan is to start with the New Year, like a resolution, only hopefully more successful.

FAQs ... or "What the Hell is Wrong with you?"

Why are you doing this?
Because I'm a mad fool with something to say, and daft enough to think I might pull this off.

Why does it need to be this long?
The length started as a mental challenge. How much would I write in a year, if I wrote every day? Then that musing prompted me to wonder if I had any idea that needed that much text to properly explain. When I found an idea I'd been struggling with for years that did require such length, and might even need more, I realized I owed it to myself to attempt the impossible.

Why the one year deadline?
Because I know myself well enough to know that if I don't set some stupid audacious goal, I won't be fired up enough to work at it. I may fail to make my deadline, but attempting will push me better than having no deadline.

This is an exercise in vanity.
It won't be art will it?
It is absolutely an exercise in bravado, and yes, probably vanity as well. Wouldn't you want to have an achievement by your name like 'wrote the world's longest novel'? And unlike an achievement such as 'spent the most time in the Amazon river on a pogo stick', this one might impress people. Does that mean it won't be art? It might, but I hope to achieve something truly artistic here. In fact, the novel itself will hopefully be a comment on the nature of story itself- but that will come done to how well I plan and how well I write.

Why release the novel into the Public Domain?
Two reasons: one noble one selfish. If the books is public domain, anyone can publish it without permission, and the Guinness Book of World Records only recognizes published (not self-published) works for inclusion. Second, since the novel I will writing is an mythopoeic exercise in story and culture, I want people to be able to play with it and build on it. In the public domain, I have literally given it to everyone, and nobody (including) myself can claim the final say on how its used or what it means. I want this novel to have a rejuvenating effect on our cultural mythology, and to be a set of building blocks and a tool chest that others can use. I can't very well do that if I horde control of the work to myself.

So is this just a first draft then?
Yes, but since I am publishing it. Then its also a published work and a finished product. Although I don't imagine that any myth is finished and I will like Stephen King and George Lucas, be rebuilding this product for quite some time. But the cool thing is, if you like this story in any version, is that it is already in the public domain and you may keep or distribute or work on or with any part of this story for any reason. You don't even have to give me credit or let me know, although both would be awesome and appreciated.

What if it sucks?
Then I tried. I will have learned a lot, improved a lot, and will do better next time.

Current Project: The Song of Seven

I am listing this as the current project. The future project would more accurately describe the project however. I have realized that writing 3781 words per day, a writer could write a novel of 1.38 million words in length in a single year. This would beat the current Guinness World Record of the the longest novel, currently held by Marcel Proust's 'À la recherche du temps perdu.'

The resulting novel's word count would also be 1/1000th the age of the known universe in years. To do this, a novelist would need to write roughly 4000 words per day. Anthony Trollope wrote 3000 per day, and did so consistently through his whole life. Many writers of the Victorian era, such as Charles Dickens, wrote enormous masterpieces such as 'Bleak House' in a serialized fashion in Newspapers. This serialized method forced the authors to write the story in real time, leaving them unable to go back and edit or rework.

To perform such a feat in a serial fashion, the author would need to plan out their plot and their structure well in advance. The following is especially true if the author plans (as I do) to use multiple interweaving plots to tell a story that transcends any one plot.

So that is my plan. I will write a novel that will break the Guinness World Record for the longest novel (somebody other than the author must also have published the work, but that can be addressed later).  I will write this novel in 2000 word installments, twice per day. I will post the progress as I write it, serializing it as Charles Dickens serialized 'Bleak House'. I also release the whole work into the public domain.

I am planning my project now. I am not ready to begin writing. I do not know whether I can do this. But whether I succeed or fail, the attempt should prove magnificent.
 

Monday Meditations: What is the fear that drives domesticated man?

What is the fear that drives domesticated man? Where does his terror lie? What drives him to lock his dead away from their nurturing mother in the final sleep? What drives him to coat the comfortable ground with stone and steel until the earth sleeps so far below that it cannot be felt? What drives him to insulate himself within buildings so much larger than are needed? What drives him to interact with the world and with other domesticated humans through ever more convoluted intermediaries?

(domesticate man can safely be referred to as male- for his politics explicitly marginalize the female as well as the minority and the servant and the slave)

Let us examine the words in common across differing views. Lets us look for the assumptions not questioned, but held by all.

"That he may have dominion over . . . every creature." 

Genesis 1:26

"There is not, within the wide range of philosophical inquiry, a subject more intensely interesting to all who thirst for knowledge, than the precise nature of that important mental superiority which elevates the human being above the brute, and enables man alone to assume the sway wheresoever he plants his dwelling; and to induce changes in the constitution and adaptions (sic) of other species, which have no parallel where his interference is unknown."

by Edward Blyth 

(The Magazine of Natural History   Vol. 10. 1837)

"If it can be shown possible for man to have descended or ascended from the lower animals, it will require enormous additional evidence to show that such descent is probable; and still much more to make it certain. "

by Rev William A. William 

(The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproven in 50 Arguments, 1925)

"Homo heidelbergensis was developing a complex mind - once this boundary had been reached, there was no turning back."

The First Europeans, British Broadcast Corporation 2010

"The more disciplined behavior (behavior determined by intellect) displayed by the individual, the more human he becomes. The less disciplined behavior (behavior in response to instinct) displayed by an individual, the more he becomes like the lower order animals that are lacking in intellect and are driven by their instincts. "

The Evolution of the Human, www.onelife.com

The assumptions should be clear.

Domesticated man does not consider himself an animal. Or, if forced to admit that indeed he is an animal in the technical sense, then domesticated man maintains that he is so different- so above- other animals so as to render the argument moot. 

I would like to use a different quote to draw attention to the second assumption in the above quotations.

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

Douglas Adams

Why is domesticated man afraid of being an animal? Why is domesticated man so driven to enforce his conception of order upon an already perfectly functioning and ordered world? What does this have to do with domesticated man's need to hide from the world he is seeking to re-order in his own image?

So many questions. So much fear.

From Fakelore to Makelore (Fixing a Stolen Term)

Fakelore refers to invent folklore, but in a way that presumes that inventing folklore is somehow unusual or spurious. Makelore is the same idea, but understands that all folklore is invented and serves a social cultural purpose and created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakelore 

Makelore is incredibly important to memory and story and we should build our own personal and shared makelore in order to remember the stories that tell us who we are and who we want to be.

Cross Thinking

I don't read books one at a time. I read several books at once. I let these books have a conevrsation. What does this have to say to that? The books are normally not too similar, because that would be boring. I enjoy seeing the connections between books a little further a field.

What does Sudhir Venkatesh's "Gang Leader for a Day" have to say to A.J. Jacobs' "My Year of Living Biblically"? Quite a lot actually.

What does "Man's Search for Meaning" have to say that can enlighten "The Long Emergency"? More than you might think.

Currently I am reading "You are Now Less Dumb" and "The Five Stages of Collapse", and the result is enlightening. Reading a book about common errors in thinking and common methods of self deception while also reading a book that essentially points out that the modern international economy is a Ponzi scheme, allowed me to gain insight into the questions "How did we let this happen? And why is nobody sounding the alarm?"

Monday Meditations: Rotting Life and Decomposition Phobia

The domesticated human is afraid of death and more precisely- afraid of decomposition. Dead human bodies are sealed in boxes before they are allowed to enter the earth, safe now from every remixing with the land that birthed and sustained them, safe now from ever returning and being part of the next cycle of life. The domesticated human removes themselves from the landscape, from the eco-system. They take food, they take air and they take in minerals and nutrients, but never return them- as is the bargain life makes with itself. 

The domesticated human is a thief and a parasite. The domesticated humans takes and takes and does not give back. So the question arises- why not?

The domesticated human is afraid to die, afraid to rot, afraid to give back, afraid to return. Do they fear retribution, angry vengeance from the rest of the earthy community if they allow their body and perhaps their spirit to rejoin the earth from which it was composed? 

Do they fear something else?

Do they fear many other things?