Dennis O'Toole
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NaNoWriMo

11/30/2011

3 Comments

 
Picture
James Joyce, NaNoWriMo Legend
__ NaNoWriMo
A Play in One Act

Dramatis Personæ:
  • STEVE
  • MIKE
SCENE—a bar; early December, 2011.  America has just wrapped up another NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month.  Two guys—STEVE and MIKE, both, mid-20s—are drinking beers, doing shots, and totally partying.

MIKE:
So, Steve, you do NaNoWriMo this year?



STEVE:
You didn’t hear?

MIKE:

Hear what?

STEVE:

I finished my novel on the morning of November 30.  Submitted it to Nan [Talese] that afternoon.  On December 1 it was in every bookstore in America.  A few days later, in a glowing twenty-two-page celebration, James Wood hailed it as “fucking awesome.”

MIKE:

Holy shit!

STEVE:

First time a New Yorker critic ever dropped an F-bomb in a review.  At least that’s what Nan says.

MIKE:

Congrats, man!

[
The two men ceremoniously high five.]

STEVE:

Thanks!  How ‘bout you?

MIKE:

Eh, it went all right.  I had a killer Bildungsroman goin
’
.  I was knockin’ out 10,000 words a day, at least.  Then…  Ah, you know.  I had to go down to my folks’ place in Indianapolis for Thanksgiving, then I had to be up early on Black Friday to catch all them deals.  Next thing you know it’s frickin’ Advent already and--

STEVE:

Oh, Mikey… 

MIKE:

I’m telling you man, the book was frickin’ killer up to that point. 

STEVE:

Well, what’s this Bildungsroman about?  I mean, aside from the moral and spiritual growth of your presumably male protagonist.

MIKE:

Oh, jeez.  What wasn’t it about?  Starts with a boy in fin de siècle Davenport, Iowa.  He goes to Yale in the early 1910’s, befriends a colorful bunch of East Coast aristocrats, almost loses his soul...  Graduates, moves to New York, plays piano in a ragtime band in Harlem, contracts gonorrhea from a protégé of Isadora Duncan… FUCK.  What else?  Oh, he befriends Houdini, fights in World War I with the French before the U.S. gets involved, then blah-blah-blah, bling-bling-bling, my man becomes a cereal magnate.

STEVE:

Damn!  That sounds tight.


MIKE:
Honestly, it is.  It’s a nod to Hemingway and Fitzgerald with more than a little Pynchon tossed in.  I mean, I got 30 pages where some unnamed optometrist talks to the protagonist--


STEVE:
Hold up.  Does your protagonist have a name?

MIKE:

Fuck
no!

STEVE:

Good.  Keep going.

MIKE:

Right, so this optometrist just goes on and on for 30 pages about the aeronautics of biplane design—for no reason!

STEVE:

Sweet.  [Pause.]  And then you fucked up.

MIKE:

Well, not really.  Look, I only got like 40—maybe 50,000 words left.  I see him becoming a monk eventually, a la Thomas Merton.

STEVE:

Makes sense.  Now here, listen… I want you to do something.

MIKE:

Shoot.

STEVE:

Take your manuscript, some lighter fluid, and a book of matches down to the lakefront. 

MIKE:

What?!

STEVE:

Let a little fellow named Fire do some editing. 

MIKE:

No, Steve, listen--

STEVE:
Douse the manuscript.  Light a match.  Then watch the whole thing burn. 

MIKE:

No, no.  Dude, I can’t.

STEVE:

Burn it.
  Every single page.  When the fire goes out, kick whatever remains into the lake, and let us never again speak of this book-that-might-have-been.

MIKE:

I can’t do that, Steve!

STEVE:

You have to.

MIKE:

Dammit, I put my heart into this!  I am so close!

STEVE:

Close has nothing to do with it.   You tried—and then you fucking failed.  You FAILED, Mikey.  NaNoWriMo is many things, but a game is not one of them.  It’s like James Joyce said, “If you don’t write it on a dare in 30 days…”

MIKE:

“…then it’s not a novel.” 

STEVE:

Exactly.  Look, cousin:  I love you like a brother, which is why I gotta be so goddamn REAL with you.  You fucked up.

MIKE:

[Long pause.]  I know.

STEVE:

You fucked up bad.  It is not my job as a fellow writing hobbyist to sit here and fluff your goddamn pillows.  I won’t do it, bro.  It would be a dis to you, and worse—it would be a dis to the novel.

MIKE:

I know…  I know.  [Long pause.  Very long.  The actors just chill for, like, nine minutes.  Maybe thirty.] You’re right.  I must do this.

STEVE:

It will make you a better writer. 

MIKE:

Come with me.  Come… while I burn it.

STEVE:

I’m afraid I can’t do that, Michael.  There can be no intermediary at this rendezvous with yourself.

MIKE:

Well, can you drive me to the lake?

STEVE:

Oh, yeah.  Sure, that’s no problem.


[Three hot chicks enter from stage left, cross through the foreground, and exit stage right.  STEVE and MIKE are both like “Wha!?!”]

MIKE:

Hey, Steve.  You never told me about your novel.

STEVE:

Hmm.  Right.  Well, it’s called NaNoWriMo.  The whole novel is two guys talking about NaNoWriMo.  Drinking beers.  Doing shots.  Just hanging out in a bar.  A guy named Steve… and a guy named Mike.

MIKE:

Oh my God.
 
STEVE:
Yeah, man…  Yeah.
 
[Extremely slow fade, then
CURTAIN
.  Somehow this all needs to be staged so that, as the lights go out, the audience is like, “Oh snap!  That all happened in my mind.”]

3 Comments
Sue
1/4/2012 05:35:18 am

You've been quiet for some time now...have you been celebrating the end of 2011 too much?

Reply
Dennis
1/4/2012 06:37:24 am

Kind of, if laundry and apartment maintenance count as celebrating. Plus, December felt about eight days long. Feels like just yesterday it was Rockvember.

2012 is gonna be [capslock]huge[/emphatic font]. Stay tuned.

Reply
Sue
1/5/2012 01:53:02 am

Laundry definitely doesn't count. Painting or some other mundane home improvement while drinking may apply. However, if apartment maintenance includes building a bar and/or installing a mirrored ball, that would be something to celebrate...ok, not the mirrored ball part.

Reply

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    About Dennis

    Dennis O'Toole is an all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime.  He lives in Chicago. 

    If you need to reach me, dial:
    denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail DOT co LETTER M.  

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