It’s for beer.

One of the contentions of the novel I’m currently writing is that humanity’s entire modern civilization owes everything to the discovery of beer, that mankind changed from hunter-gatherers to farmers, and then developed cities and society, specifically so that they could produce beer.  Beer to them was divine and the nectar of the Gods.  It got them buzzed, helped them forget about their worries, and got even the ugly guys laid.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this while doing research and thought I’d share it with you.  The picture links to the article from which I stole it .

Having to stay inside a lot is forcing me to work on my novel. Made great progress this weekend.

Go muse!

– Post From My iPhone

Artists and scribes through the ages have celebrated the wonders of the Muses, those supernatural beings who bring us inspiration and cause us to create things that are clearly too brilliant to have come from us alone. But there’s a darker being that is never discussed, at least directly. And that is an imp that I have come to know as the Anti-Muse.

Last summer I had a window of opportunity to devote a large amount of time to my current novel, and I challenged myself to finally finishing the first draft. I could have done it. I know I could have – I’ve done marathon writing sessions in the past. But for some reason my Anti-Muse was particularly strong, so much so – and so obviously so – I started keeping track of all the things this Anti-Muse tried to do to sabotage my writing efforts.

Below, directly from my scribbled notes, is the internal dialog I had with this little demon. And so, writing along … or simply staring at the blank white page … these voices would pop into my head, followed by my conscious response.

“You’re hungry!” Clearly, I am not hungry. I’m not even thirsty. “Yes you are! You’re hungry!” No I am not.

“You’re sleepy!” Not really. “Yes you are. Why don’t you go take a nap?” No.

“You have to check email!” No, I don’t.

“You have to make a list of what I’m doing to sabotage you!” I seem to have given in to this one.

“You’re cold!” I put on a robe.

“You’re hot!” I take the robe back off. Now I’m cold again.

“You have to wash dishes!” There’s only two dishes in the sink and they can wait.

“You’re horny!” So what’s new? I’m always horny. I’m a guy.

“Waa! I don’t want to work on this! Let’s go take a walk – it’s beautiful outside.” No.

“You have to get up and go do something.” Like what? “I don’t know, but SOMETHING.” No.

“You deserve a break. Play Mine Sweeper.” No.

“Let’s surf the Internet!” [My response to that was to turn my cable modem off.]

“What the heck is that banging noise? Go to the window and check!” It’s not important.

“You need to stop and calculate how many words you must write per day in order to achieve your goal.” No, I do not, I just need to write the freaking words!

“Ha ha! I’ve made you write more on this list than you have so far on your manuscript!” Dammit.

“You need to go to garage sales and find a more comfortable desk chair. It would help your writing.” No, it would help my writing if you would LET ME FREAKING WRITE!

“You’re REALLY sleepy.” Damn, I am. Keep going through.

“You’re horny, thirsty, sleepy, hungry, and you need a shower! AND you need to wash dishes!” I give up. I’ll take a little break.

“You are SLEEPY!” Wow, I really am. To the point of it being useless sitting here fighting it.

[After the nap, the Anti-Muse wins again, guiding me to another light meal – after which I absent-mindedly surf the Internet for 45 minutes. Then after writing for only 15 minutes I’m sleepy again.]

“Hey, why don’t we watch YouTube?” Okay, whatever, let’s watch YouTube for an hour.

“You’re sleepy again.” True, I’ve only written for 15 minutes and now I’m falling asleep in front of the keyboard.

“You need to go kiss your girlfriend!” I agree with this one. I go give my girlfriend lots of kisses.

“You need to go take pictures of the sunset!” No.

“You really need to reorganize all ten-million files in your ‘My Documents’ folder!” [I fell for this one before I realized what I was doing.]

“You must reorganize all your MP3 files.” Ugh.

It was after this that I realized keeping the list, in itself, had turned into a major distraction. But the Anti-Muse continued this campaign unabated for three straight weeks, and I did not reach my goal.

The first draft of the manuscript is still unfinished.

Is this just me? Or do you have an Anti-Muse too?

Allow me this short moment of anger.

Okay, it’s passed. I’ll just quickly sum up what I wrote and then lost…

I’m feeling down this evening, but at least I’m making good progress on my manuscript.

That’s it. That’s all I’d said. I used a lot more words and was more clever and witty about it, but that’s gone now, leaving you with this.

That, and I’m looking forward to meeting local writers at the various NaNoWriMo write-ins next month. I’m not technically participating but I am working on a novel. Good enough for an excuse to show up.

I’m still making progress on my novel Daytime For The Dead, though it’s slowed way down again.  Ah, with luck, I’ll get that first draft done by the end of the year.

Today I’m going to break down and go to the local AT&T store and see if I can score myself an iPhone.  The way I justified it to myself is that:

• It may very well increase my productivity.
• The websites I design for GroovyMojo Media, as well as for my day-job company, need to look good on an iPhone (the iPhone has achieved critical mass and so has to be designed for, based on the fact that a whole lot of people will be viewing websites using them).
• How can I see if they look good on an iPhone if I don’t have one to test with?

Where would we be without a good rationalization here and there.  You know?

I am still buzzing from the chapter I just wrote — it’s the turning point of the story and it all starts rumbling toward the end like an avalanche from here on out.

The final third of a novel is, to me, the most enjoyable part to write.

I’m putting this out in public so as to make myself accountable to the world, at large.  Hopefully this will help swat back that little demon inside me that tries to convince me that every other thing in my world is more important and pressing than working on my manuscript.  I swear, my mind even tries to get me to re-arrange the furnature, rather than sitting at the keyboard and writing.

UPDATE 8/13/2008 – I’m not going to be able to finish it, partially because one of my molars crumbled resulting in me being high on codeine for the past three days.  However, I have put over 20,000 words on it so far, and will probably be able to resume writing tonight.

The other reason has to do with my subconscious full-on fighting me about it.  I’ve taken notes.  Look for an article coming up sometime in the next few weeks detailing all the things your mind will do to keep you from writing.

One of my websites, GroovyBrew, is also about the search for the Holy Beer. The difference is that one is fiction, the other reality.

Pictured to the left, here, is the closest thing I’ve found yet to the Holy Beer. It’s called “Chicken Killer Barley Wine Ale” from Santa Fe Brewing. It’s the not the Holy Grail itself but it’s darn close.

Reviewing beer for GroovyBrew is my research for the novel, and on GroovyBrew I also talk about my novel, which in turn is generating publicity for it even as I write it.

Over the last few months I’ve slacked off on my novel writing, concentrating more on a couple short stories and other projects, but now I’m back on it. I just gave a read through of the 37,000 words I’ve written so far, glanced over my notes, and found it to be just as compelling and fun as I did when I first started.

Even more so, as the perspective a little time gave me away from the project has enabled me to see, with fresh eyes, that it really is worth working on.

Excuse my ego here for a moment, but this story rocks. I’m writing the stuff I want to read. This is Tim Powers mixed with Philip K. Dick mixed with Hemmingway.

Like I said, excuse my ego a moment. But allow me my enthusiasm. If I didn’t feel this way, why would I bother to finish writing it?

All you writers out there, you should also feel this way about your projects. It’s perfectly okay to think you’re writing the great [American] [English] [Canadian] [South African] [Etc.] novel. For the first draft, especially, this mindset is absolutely necessary.

So go ahead. Let your ego out. Let it roar!

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you have a good one. And for those of you out there who celebrate something different, or don’t celebrate anything at all, well, I hope you have a great new year.

Group hug! Come on now! Don’t be shy!

Peace.

As of yesterday, my NaNoWriMo word count stood at: 0

Today, however, my word count jumped all the way up to 6. That is SIX more times the words I had yesterday! Woo-hoo, progress!

With any luck I’ll have pushed the word count up to 11 by this evening.

I am very happy to be a new member of the Yard Dog family!