This morning I put the finishing touches on the final chapter of the first draft of a novel I call Ghost Inn. The book came in at around 94,000 words. I started it two years ago after NECON in response to a call for proposals issued there, but when that proposal didn’t come to fruition, I let the sixty or seventy pages I had written linger. Every now and then I brought the document up and tinkered with it, and had it all the way to 19,000 words by the end of October. I decided to kick start the project during NECON and got it up to the mid-70s by the end of November and to the end now.
Writing “The End” was a little anti-climactic because I’d written the ending in my head over a week ago and was only now putting it down on the page. I have to spend the next couple of writing sessions (see my Storytellers Unplugged essay Writing On a Budget, posted yesterday) finishing a column for Cemetery Dance magazine. Once I have that out of the way, I’m going to go back to the beginning and do a thorough grammar and continuity edit before sending the revised first draft to my agent for his thoughts.
Watched the 1983 classic A Christmas Story for the first time yesterday. It’s a made-for-TV movie with swearing! Though I’ve seen snippets of it before (the tongue-on-the-flagpole bit, the leg lamp), I’d never seen the whole movie before. Parts of it are campy and dated, parts of it are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Got a big kick out of Darrin McGavin in the basement swearing up a storm at the furnace, his choice words substituted with a stream of nonsense. I think I heard the word platypus at least once.
Also watched the big Survivor finale last night. I was disappointed for Ozzie, but glad that he at least got the car. Jonathan’s question, though, was fairly astute—what would we be doing by giving a 25-year-old a million dollars. Of course, Yul is only a half-dozen years older than that, but a ton of money could be the ruination of someone so young. Ozzie looked like he was flourishing in post-island life. He was almost unrecognizable during the reunion show. The three-person finale was a non-starter, a suitable parallel for the tie-breaker at the final council. 90 minutes to start a fire…with matches? Sheesh. Kudos to Ozzie, though, for being fair to the end by not causing the Aitu foursome to go at each other’s throats, and to Becky for turning down the immunity idol. Next season looks interesting.
[Addendum] I read Hannibal Rising this weekend. I picked it up with some trepidation, because I didn’t like Hannibal at all. I lambasted it in a print review, criticizing both the story and the writing. The secondary things that irked me so much in Hannibal no longer bother me—the switches of tense in mid-scene and paragraph, the journalistic non-sentence scene-setting lines at the beginning of each scene—which leads me to believe that I was just pissed off about the story.
I read the whole thing in two days and enjoyed it immensely. It’s a tale of revenge that reminded me at times of The Count of Monte Cristo. When I read Hannibal, I argued that explaining Lecter made him less interesting, that he was far more enigmatic as a cannibalistic killer who simply is, but now that Harris has begun the journey into Lecter’s back story, I find myself wondering more about the evolution between the final pages of Hannibal Rising and Lecter’s next chronological appearance in Red Dragon.
A CHRISTMAS STORY was actually a theatrical release (though PBS produced a TV sequel based on another of Shepard’s memoirs; Shepard narrated again, but different actors played the roles, which followed the characters a few years later and had a really depressing ending).
I rarely type THE END, because I know how many rewrites I still face; I’m going through that now.
Thanks—I intended to say it looks like a made-for-TV movie with swearing!
A CHRISTMAS STORY is my favorite holiday movie ever
I have been known to leave the TNT 24-hour Christmas Eve marathon of it running all night long when I’m at work. Figure if I gotta be at work on Christmas Eve, at least I can have some fun!
I was rooting for Yul and/or Ozzy, so either way, I was happy last night. I did think it was kind of sleazy the way Becky told the jury about the idol, making it sound like “Yul pressured me to take it but I just couldn’t live with myself if I did.” When, at least from where I was sitting, all he did was offer the thing. And yeah, the fire debacle … “We’re going to matches” … and then Sundra runs OUT of matches … oof.
– C.
I’m glad to hear that Hannibal Rising is good. I was kind of hoping that it might be closer to Red Dragon territory since the whole Hannibal/Clarice strangeness that dominated the second half of Hannibal would be absent. I also loved the brief but horrifying glimpse of childhood in Hannibal. It sounds like a great one to check out from the beloved public library.
Turning down the idol was just about the only thing tangible Becky could say for herself, so I wasn’t all that surprised she milked it for all it was worth.
I thought Ozzy got a raw deal by being asked to talk trash about the others when the others weren’t asked to reciprocate. Made him the only one who had to negative campaign.
Not everyone I’ve heard from liked HR–including the NY Times reviewer–but I enjoyed it.
Congrats on finishing the draft of Ghost Inn!
I read the New Yorker’s Review of Hannibal Rising and was disgusted. It was a long, petty, personal attack. Okay, the reviewer didn’t like it, but he doesn’t have to go after Harris’s career.
Thanks! Now I have to sit down and read the bugger.
Maslin is usually fairly even-handed. I didn’t read her review thoroughly because I handn’t read the book yet and didn’t want to get spoiled.
At least she apparently read the book, unlike this guy!.
I’m not a Harris fan, but I found the review completely mean-spirited, but worse, the author seemed to feel an ownership with Silence of the Lambs that justified her vitriol over anything else that didn’t match up.
Swedes are weird. So, for that matter, are the Dutch. Seriously glad to be home.
I also loved HR :-
Hannibal Rising is Released
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2006/12/making-of-monster_10.html
Apparantly Harris is working on one last book – which covers the period from Hannibal Rising to Red Dragon [when he's a MD in America] and has the tentative titled ‘Doctor Lecter’
Ali
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk
I’m really happy to hear that. Hopefully it won’t take him another ten years to write it.