The GAN Is Back, Baby!

The Great American Novel may yet be within the reach of readers. That's if DOUI writers decide to participate in National Novel Writing Month*. The goal of this interestingly deranged enterprise is to enlist as many people as possible to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of a month. To make it more difficult, they picked November, a 30 day month, the daring lunatics. On the plus side, they not only expect the vast majority of the writing to be crap, they are counting on it. Clearly, these are people who believe in realistic expectations.

I would participate, but it's been hard enough finding the time, energy, and some would argue, the jokes (and you know who you are, Zimpter) for this blog.

Actually though, I've worked it out. 50,000 words is just under 2,000 words a day, or about a quarter of one of my usual posts, when I'm really feeling in the mood. So, what I could do is simply write the novel and then publish it in installments here, instead of posting on, say, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes latest placenta paella receipe, or the many ways in which Kim Ill Dong will manage to blow him self up, if the citizens of North Korea play their cards right.

This will have the duel affect of shaking up the blog a bit, and embarassing my co-contributors to participate more, just to cover for whatever daft nonsense I'm writing in the throes of trying to churn out so much verbiage. Also, the pressure will justify my one bottle of beer per evening habit through the autumn months.

My only dilemma then is what kind of plot to use. Here are two suggestions:

• Blog on the Run - A world famous blogger decides to write a novel in a month to satisfy the capricious whims of crazed online novelphiles. He is constantly thwarted by Chinese Communists, working through their front organization, a world famous online search engine. He finally succeeds when he realizes that the content of the novel doesn't matter, and finishes the work by holding the "a" key down on his keyboard for 12 hours straight, much of this whilst unconscious, due to a single beer and a very weak constitution.
• Nuclear Samurai Rock Star - A young aficianado of Japanese sword fencing is accidentally doused with radioactive waste, whilst at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Whilst trying to clean himself off with Hootie's sweat towel, he accidentally falls into a time machine and finds himself in the court of little known Tokugawa Era Daimyo Shoji Tabuchi, who happened to fall into another time machine, hidden behind the Jim Stafford Theatre. Using his newfound atomic sword powers, he elevates Shoji to Shogun, relocates the Shogunate to Branson, Missouri, and makes country-rock music the official music of Japan (due to the radioactive DNA from the sweat towel). In addition to this, the loo technology of ancient Japan is raised to a high art form.

Now, I've also considered the possibility that my colleagues here may wish to enter this novel novel-blithering contest as well, and may be struggling with their own needs for plots. So, here are some suggestions for them as well:

• Stew - Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Blog Gone? - A well-known blogger and golf maniac becomes obsessed with hitting 300+ yard drives to the extent that he can no longer remember how to access his blog. This begins a deeply existential journey into the mind of the writer, who symbolically visits Tiger Woods, Byron Nelson, Gary McCord, David Feherty, and the Batcave. Finally, he is guided by Lukas P. Short, who looks like Jim Morrison, only with a really elaborate cowboy hat, and a magnum of Jack Daniels...scratch that, Morrison would have had that, also... anyway, he is guided back to the blog, where he profusely apologises to his co-editor and makes up for his wanderings by posting 12 times a day for the next year.
• Nuffy - Looking for Mr. Northover or Five Times I Weep - Pretty much the usual stuff from Nuffy, only in narrative form, and starring Crispin Glover as Oprah Winfrey. The entire novel takes place on the back of a used tissue on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange, after Dick Cheney fills the place with buckshot during a Haliburton junket. Written entirely in Esperanto.
• Jorge - Life in the Big House - Jorge relates the daily life of an inmate in one of the most notorious prisons in wherever it is he's at. Actually, I think it's minimum security, which will be a relief to everyone who was dreading the first prison shower scene in the novel. Instead, Jorge is mildly accosted by Martha Stewart when one of his begonias accidentally blooms too close to her patch of chard. The resulting shiv fight is the highlight of the book.
• Linus - The Super Intellect and Why Women Dig It - This is the only bedroom farce to include a hyperdetailed explanation of epistomological foundationalism in a neo-Armenialist context. Also, lots of dog poop jokes. The plot revolves around a popular online writer who decides to develop a theory of universal human interaction and discovers that the key element to understanding and predicting all behavior is the same chemical formula as Flintstones Fruity Pebbles. Unfortunately, all the writer's subsequent calculations are made using the chemical formula of Cocoa Pebbles, which triggers World War III, when Fred finally catches Barney with a bowl of them and beats his brains in in the UN General Assembly.
• Zimpter - I Am Here, I Am Not Here - The story of a well-known writer who joins a blog and then disappears for several years. The story ends when the other bloggers locate him at his palatial Hollywood residence and force him at gunpoint to blog about his dinner party with Clay Aiken and Martin Short, who turn out to be the same person.

I think there's a lot of potential there. No actual writing, but a lot of potential.

*Hat Tip: Jonah Goldberg