So I've got the phone and therefore the abilty to coast the skateboard to a stop and punch in whatever I wanna add to the book without pulling out and starting up a laptop. Even if the characterset is stupid.

That resolved, I gave Lurkers a bit more thought—which I'll cover in a minute—and came to a conclusion on at least one of two matters. For the moment, though, the link leads to just about the latest update, though I fixed a couple things after uploading it and reading through what I'd got written.

As for the considerations:

One I've been uncharacteristically concerned about, since the narrator is uncommonly evil, is whether to let him be as evil as I actually want him to be. Ordinarily, I'd be good with that; in this case, the whole thing being firstperson and the guy being not dissimilar from me in the first place, and also people being really, really stupid, I'm wondering whether someone having a grownup read the book to him will mistake the narrator for the novelist.

I wanna say it was Heinlein who once said something like this, but I'm probably wrong: 'There's a technical term for someone who reads a work of fiction and assumes that everything in it is the author's opinion; that word is "idiot"'; knowing that idiots occur, and that right now there is no cure, it's something I'm keeping in mind.

What I decided though was that A) I don't really care what idiots think—no one controls that, least of all themselves; B) once the whole thing's done, I'll have that What'sNew thing at the end in which I can overexplain how much the guy reportedly writing the book is just another one of my complex creations apparently making me a deity; and C) most people able to read a book and remember it long enough to go blather about it might be clever enough to grok that the novelist and the narrator might be different entities. So we're okay with the evil.

The other thing, which I'm still considering, is how to write the book entirely. In the original filmscript, the ending was kinda zany. And I could totally go zany again, since that's fun; on the other hand, it's also less believable. So far, I'm pretty sure, the book is perfectly credible: a guy who writes books walks into a restaurant and stupidity ensues. Trust me: that happens more than I'm comfy with. That the guy in the story might actually be less forgiving than I am, against all natural law, doesn't necessarily diminish the credibility; it just keeps things interesting and amusing. Probably.

So, how to end things is still open for the moment. I guess I'll keep typing until one or the other becomes certain.

Something else I wasn't sure about, but I did it anyway: I handed this guy a few things from other stuff—News of the Stupid and Paroxysm and whatever. As much as it seems like I'm just reusing these things, it also seems like it kinda divorces the guy from my stuff: if he'd written those books, he wouldn't be reusing the ideas [though, while I've written those books, I've been known to mention various things at restaurants off the cuff, without crediting the published source, arguably playing it like I'd just thought of it that second].

Of course, he and I have got a lot in common; I never really tried to prevent that. And, here's the funny thing. For the last...Iunno, four years? Every damned week on television, Greg House manages to quote me. Seriously. I've looked it up on occasion. I'm actually starting to wonder whether someone in the bullpen is keeping an eye on this site. If so: Hi There. And also: sorry about only writing one of these things every few weeks; we can still pretend the writers' strike was all about Sutherland being in prison and preventing last year's 24, okay?

Anyway: in writing...kindasorta me, but not really, I'm actually becoming painfully aware how much comparison there really is. Which is weird. I've never met Hugh Laurie; we had a mutual friend at one point, but Douglas Adams died; is it possible to base a character on a guy you've never met? Possibly never heard of? Johnny Depp can deny basing Ed Wood on Jon Lovitz, and Wonka on Michael Jackson; but who's gonna believe him. Until, impossibly enough, a guy in a show not only says the stuff I've said, but probably in the same voice. This might be Quetzalcoatl trying to tell me something.

Not a big deal, I guess; it's just weird. Also, it might be worth mentioning that, while the guy in this novel isn't really me, it's also not really House. Even if spotting any distinctions takes an expert. Ain't my fault.

I'm still hoping to get the book done this year. Though it's a stupid year. Again. Without knowing which slammable moron will be in the whitehouse in August 2009 as I write this, there's some stuff I can't really have people talk about to any extent. And I'd like to have the narrator ask a couple of awkward questions which I personally could ask, though I'd probably preamble the hell outta them with fun excuses like not that I care about the meaningless vestigial 'races' of caucasoids and negroids and mongoloids, but before wondering whether, if Obama were elected, it would mean that blacks in the US as at best a submorph of the human race would suddenly be as unprotected as the submorph of whites. I'd really like to know that. More importantly, I'd really like that to be the case. Because I don't care that Obama is black. I care that people want me to care that he's black, then get all uppity when I don't care in some activistically approved way. Diversity is defined as everyone hating something different; don't hold it against normal people when they join your little club with proclivities you happen to be terrified—

Nevermind. I'll have the guy cover that in the book. He for all I know does care whether people are black; Archie Bunker Lives.

More later....

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Tags: Books | Lurkers