Well I'm at it again...

Since I've started writing on this blog, I've started several attempts at writing a novel. Each attempt has failed for one reason or another, lets examine each:

Attempt #1: Rewriting 1984

My first idea was basically my own spin on 1984. Gee I can't imagine why that failed, maybe because Orwell's book is so dark and scary (and sadly coming to fruition in our reality of today) that any attempt to do one better will fail (see "V For Vendetta" the film and comic book). Beyond that, my heart just wasn't in it. Part of what doomed me was that the fact that I decided to write the whole thing out by hand. This meant that all the revisions had to be done by hand...ugh...too much work

Attempt #2: My take on Spirituality

My second idea was much more interesting, basically I wrote a revenge/death fantasy story about a guy who dies and travels around an alternate plane looking for his shoes. "The Wizard of Oz" meets Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series. Exactly...the idea might have worked, except that my own spiritual beliefs (which would have been the heart of the story) are wishy-washy at best. I got 10,000 words out of this, making it my second longest novel attempt yet. Sad, huh?

Why have these, and all my other attempts really failed though? I think it's because I keep writing about things that are too far outside my sphere of experiance. They always say things like "write what you know." So, in that vein, I've decided that my first novel...will be about a disillusioned college student who goes home and hangs out with his friends from High School. They talk about how much it sucks to be young and totally clueless about the future. Sex. Drugs. Rock and Roll.

I'm not even going to lie and say something to jink the whole thing (like I've done in the past) like "I'm really going to write this one, I'm going to see it all the way through to the end..."

On the plus side, however, I have the first chapter written in my head and it's:

1. Really fucking funny
2. Good enough to stand on it's own as a short story (so if the novel doesn't materialize...I'll at least have a new short story...which at this point will be better than nothing).

Anyone who reads this, please get behind this thing...force me to actually write this...writing seriously the only thing I'm even remotely good at.