American Gods

I finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaimon today. On a side note, I would recommend picking it up. I felt a little sad to leave that particular world. More precisely to have my connection with that world cut off. If I had my choice I would just turn to the next page and continue reading. Page 588 would not be my last contact. I feel that way with books or movies that I really enjoy. I feel a sense of loss, of melancholy to leave them behind. But with the GIANT I don't have that same feeling. I have a good idea of what the ending will be, but beyond that I know not how THAT world will continue. No more than a reader of the book would. Of course the book isn't finished yet. And I do have a habit of not finishing things. As if finishing severs my connection with the thing? I'm not sure.

I do enjoy the process, the act of discovery. Many things that I start, I can see how they will end, and thus never complete them. But as I've now forced myself to not let the GIANT sit unfinished I am beginning to look at that philosophy differently. Before I typed one word I had sketched out much of the book. I knew the main characters, the settings, some of the journeys involved. I had pictures and mental maps.

So I began in early summer of 2005 typing. It would be what? eight or nine months until I returned to it. Now it is more than a year since the beginning and I am returning to what I had written initially. A lot of it was horrible. Blgh. A bunch of hacky crap. At one point I wrote a note to myself the that following paragraph was horrible, but I was leaving it in for reference. I'm not sure what I meant by "reference". Some point in the paragraph that I bumbled through, or for me to reference the abuse of the English language. Probably the latter, knowing me (and I should).

Once again I start on one topic and finish with another.

Thanks for listening.

First Draft Naming

I’ve named the first official draft: Draft 1a.

The cover reads:

Draft 1a: Copy not complete. This version is an on-screen edit of the text in order to facilitate and complete the closing chapters. In doing so, some of the previously written material may be changed or deleted. Refer to previous copies of the text for this information.

The characters and the story arcs have changed as I’ve moved through the book, so I’m going back through tightening things up, filling in details and making everything congruent. I hope by the end of this draft writing to have a complete story, with all the pieces filled in.

Origins of the GIANT

Where does the GIANT start? Where was it born? I lived in Connecticut a few years back. I woke up from a dream one morning. A pretty powerful one. Strong enough for me to dig out an old sketchbook from a few years back and sketch out the dream (This was something I didn’t do much back then). One image of a giant skeleton on some giant table surrounded by this futuristic fence (probably mentally lifted from Jurassic Park or Starship Troopers) sitting in the woods.

The other image was of a flotilla of ships, sailing to sea. On the bow of one of the ships was a banner with an inscription. I wrote: “text about noble giant killed by man…Honorary funeral @ sea” (This I know I took from the Civil War documentary by Ken Burns. More precisely the style of the newspapers, how they would spell out text in sidebars).

One page. I put this together in late 2003, most likely judging from the pages before and after. Then I had another dream, which I didn’t write down, but remembered. That of a man driving to New York, or leaving New York, heading west? I’m not sure. Maybe it was all one in the same.

And from there? Things just fell into place.