A Decade of Sentences

It occured to me yesterday that I have been writing the great American novel for almost exactly a decade. Yes, that's right, ten years.

Good Greif, you are thinking, is it approximately the length of Gone with the Wind, War and Peace, and It combined?

No, unfortunately, it is around 50 pages. Alas, not the great American novel yet. (It's got a great concept, though, and I swear the main character is nearly as cool as Holden Caufield.)

I have recently become enamored of a blog called Dad Gone Mad (www.dadgonemad.com) and am inspired by DGM's similar struggle and recent success at the book-writing dream. It's amazing to me how many people share the desire to be the next J.D. Salinger, but here we are, a culture of wanna-be writers. Maybe, it's just a generation of wanna-be writers. It does seem that they are mostly my age.

Digressing, do you remember when you were a kid and everyone you knew wanted to be a singer when they grew up. I remember, in fact, desperately wanting to be a singer, and refusing to admit it to anyone because everyone else did. Well, it turns out we all grew up and decided that we want to be writers when we retire. How boring! A generation of literary Grandma Moses'.

Well, I for one refuse. If I haven't published a book by the time my kids graduate from high school (or possibly college) then I give. If only to save the world from the onslaught of geriatric literature my generation is bound to unleash.

In any case, I am resolving to write. I am going to finish the Great American Novel by Jessi and I am not going to take another decade to do it. I make no promises about how long I will take, but it will not be a whole decade.

And as part of that resolution, I resolve to blog. Not because my book is going to be all bloggy, but because sometimes writing is more about putting pen to paper (or in the modern vernacular fingers to keys) than anything else. And if I can do that here, surely to goodness I can do it in the Big Blank Word Document.