The Truth About My Novel

Okay, so I am doing National Novel Writing Month with my wife and daughter because it's a fun way for the family to spend time together and not talk. Dinner time now sounds like this:

clackyclackyclackyclackyclackyclackyclackytaptaptapclackyclackyclackyclacky

"What's another word for anemic bastard?"

Worse, there's a strange competition going on in our house now. My wife and I now measure our worth by word count (so kicking her ass, which means I don't have to make dinner until she earns the literary right to take the night off--that means none of my famous balsalmic chicken or stir fry until that day) and my normally sweet eleven-year-old daughter has acquired some sort of arrogance and wit that has turned her into Mrs. Parker and the Vicious circle. I really wish she'd stop asking to spend time at the Algonquin.

I'm learning some things about myself. For example, I'm a supremely lazy writer. My use of grammar is, shall we say, slovenly. It's not that I don't respect the rules of our language. It's that I really don't feel like using them most of the time. Am I capable? Yes. Do I do it? Frequently. Will I ever correct myself? I suppose. Do I care? Not a bit.

So for all you grammar cops out there I have one thing to say: Bite the big one. I'm essentially free writing. When it's time to edit--strike that--IF it's ever time to edit it, then we'll discuss Strunk and White. Okay? Now take your blood pressure medicine and go focus on your own comma splices.

So, you can see my progress here. I'm not posting the little badge on my site because, ultimately, I'm too lazy. You can also read an excerpt there.

Note on the site: It's slow, uses clunky flash and makes my brain hurt. But it looks pretty.

Note on my story: You won't care about it. But you can still read the excerpt. Odds are you'll never see any more of it. For the most part, it's literary masturbation.

But here's the premise of my original idea: Floyd Landis is sitting in an Alpine bar, tossing back a few Amstel Lites with his buddies when, suddenly, his ratio of Testosterone to Epitestosterone goes completely out of whack. His skin turns yellow and he grows to be, something like, 6 feet tall and 200 pounds (Hey, he's a cyclist. For them that's Hulk size.) Then, he goes on a rampage through France searching for something that can only be described as "(s)". No one understands what he's talking about because he's speaking in incomprehensible bursts like, "The 30ng/ml limit is not the threshold for a positive but is the reasonable limit for detection the lab must demonstrate (like the 2ng/mL for [T] or [E])."

Then, just as Floyd is about to eat the Eiffel Tower, a guy in a lab coat comes up and tells him that he accidentally spilled white out all over his lab documents and it turns out that there was nothing wrong with his T/E ratio, but some jerk from the drug testing lab had written a lewd comment about Floyd's wife with similar letters and that this whole thing was a mistake.

"My bad," says the lab dude. Then Floyd shrinks back down to normal size, takes a shot of Jack Daniels and says, "Hey no problem." And he goes on to win every race that ASO sponsors for the next five years. Including the Tour de l'Avenir, which causes a whole new controversy.

I thought this was a good idea. Turns out, I was wrong. There's a website out there that's telling a much better story and, apparently, it's all true. Damn it.

Oh well, back to the sophomoric drivel I'm writing.