2010 Plans

The stack of my past writings.

Brother Seamus has completed a final mix and mastering of our latest album. The album artwork is in the final stages of design and we are working on finding a print shop that will print our CD sleeves and CDs for a good price.

In 2010 I will shift my focus away from music. I'm not giving it up, in any sense, but there are other things that need my attention and and require some of the time I would otherwise devote to music if I were to continue apace into 2010.

It has been almost five years since I finished a novel and I am nervous that if I wait any longer to write a new one, in earnest, I may forever lose my literary momentum. I still entertain, albeit less and less, ideas of publishing a novel before I abandon this mortal coil.

So, 2010 is my year of the novel. I am about 5-10 pages (I am writing it in Google Docs, so there is no page count) into something new. I have set a goal to finish a novel of at least 67,707 words by the end of next year. "Why 67,707?" you ask. Because of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which is in all respects a nearly perfect modern novel. Even if I don't get anything else right, I will at least have a book of a perfect length. To date, I have 2,258 words toward my goal.

My last novel, which I finished in early 2006, was a little more than 50,000 words, by comparison. That puts it in the company of the Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five and Fahrenheit 451, but only in length (and, quite possibly, in its ability to appear torturous to high school kids).

Expect (I'll leave it to you to determine whether to breathlessly anticipate) more news on this endeavor in the coming months. If I feel up to cutting and pasting, I may even include some excerpts.