--{ long fiction }------
So my writings on this page have trailed off in the last month or so. So I've made some references here to this other thing I've been writing. So I might as well make a little confession.
Anyway, what I've been doing, er, is trying to write a book. Which for me is a big deal, though it might not be such a big deal to real novelists. Or even real aspiring novelists, of which I am not. I am a current-law/ former-science geek who needs a fun side project. And this is it.
My book, or "long length fiction thing," as I prefer to call it, despite its much longer length, will be finished by December or January at the latest, I hope. I am over half-way through now. It has dragons and monsters and stuff.
Just kidding. It doesn't. It has a world where everyone writes fiction. Everyone, that is, except for the small minority of people who seem to be unable to do so. Those people are forced to join terra firms, where they find work as establishmentarians, which is a profession that basically combines everything "truth"-seeking1 in our world (science, history, economics, etc etc etc) into one single profession. They establish what's "true" with the aid of their vault systems, places where they store all their hard-earned established knowledge, places where they generate predictions of what other knowledge can be established.
The book starts with the death of Rufus, an establishmentarian, and with the investigation of Rufus's death. No, wait, it starts with a series of letters sent from Rufus's system account. It goes into a bunch of other things, but mostly into the life of Ellen, who received those letters sent from Rufus's account.
Is there anything beyond this book besides its plot? Like the social commentary that's supposed to be in all fine lit'rature these days? I suppose, though I'm hoping I've kept it understated. (Indeed, I've gone through and excised the parts that I've been told weren't.)
Anyway, I'm really hoping that I manage to finish this thing. Yes, I know how pretentious and awful it sounds, this writing-a-book thing. I even hope to take advantage of the pretentiousness of it at some point or another.
But mostly I just want to reach completion. I'm finding that there's an amateur marathoner feel to my experience, just trying to hang in there till I reach the finish line. But it should be all downhill from here, as I just passed the half-way point, and have everything basically mapped out. But you never know. I could still get distracted by non-fictioney stuff. So wish me luck.
081001
1. Yes, I realize that the nature of truth is not so simple. and I make references to that comlexity in the book too. And besides, it's a fictional world goddammit, so of course the nature of truth doesn't quite have to be the same.