tooth soup

photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection

It feels like

forever since I’ve spent an appreciable amount of time on a book. Tim Winton’s ‘Dirt Music’ is sitting on my computer desk at home, and ‘The Language Instinct’ is looking at my forlornly on my bedside table. Right, promise to self: finish at least one of them by July and report it here.

To be honest with myself the reason I haven’t read so much lately is due mainly to my latent video game addiction and its ability to suck away hours at a time. It’s sad, I know, but thankfully it’s mostly been single player games; I’ve been cured of the MMO disease for quite some time now and don’t feel any strong feelings in its direction. So far I’ve clocked (or very nearly clocked) Red Faction: Guerilla, Prototype, Braid, and Plants Vs. Zombies. I think that’ll do me for the moment; the current crop of releases don’t interest me very much, and my DS is broken so I’ll have to put off the investigation of this shining example of psychotic genius ’til another day.

But to be fair, many video games these days are offering at least some semblence of a story to go with their gameplay. Whether its a force-fed unfolding of conspiracy events as in Prototype, a touching fairytale that transcends the genre it takes place in as in Braid, or the occasional humorous note left by those out to get your brains as in Plants Vs. Zombies games are without a doubt capable of delivering a storyline deep enough to get involved in. However, it has to be said that the main reason I play video games isn’t the compelling storylines. Rather it’s the fact that after a long day of staring at molecules and navigating text-only command line interfaces, I want to switch my brain to cruise control. And video games certainly help with that.

Then again, I’ve also begun tentatively picking through the remains of my oft-started, never-finished novel (which I prefer to refer to as ‘the long story’, since I’m not actually convinced it’ll end up being of novel length). I was very much relieved today when I read this article by John Scalzi and the contained quote:

“Most first novels are no damn good. Second ones are often better, but not always, and often not by much. Third and fourth novels, the same thing. Fact is — and this should not be news at this late date — ask most debut novelists how many novels they wrote before they got one published, and you’ll find out the answer is: two, three, four — sometimes more. Debut novels are almost never first novels; it’s just the first novel you see. And all those other novels you will never know about? They took lots of time to write, too.”

Which made me feel much better, since I am only 23 and this is my first novel long story and it doesn’t matter if it’s crap because it’s highly likely that the only people to see it will be my girlfriend and a variety of paper bins. Barring Stephanie Meyer syndrome, there’s no pressure for me to have a best-seller in the works already. So I can take my time and enjoy it. You are probably thinking that I should be enjoying it anyway, and I would reply straight out to that that there is nothing in this world I like more than creating characters and expressing ideas and building meaning into words. It’s just that sometimes I get distracted by my own perfectionism. And while I still won’t let up on myself and trying to get the first draft done by January 2010, I won’t get too upset if I only make it half-way, or if it turns out a turd.

I had planned to tell you all about how I’ve started writing my thesis and how it’s like trying to draw blood out of a crystal of titanium dioxide, but then I realised how boring that would be. Instead, here’s a few questions that are semi-related to this post: How do you relax at the end of the working day? Or can you even relax? Do you take your job home, or can you leave it at the door? Would you like to?

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