On blog fiction
I started writing my fictional blog today. Of course, for the experiment to work, I can't tell anybody how to find it, but I can talk about it. Turns out blogs are a good format for fiction after all. A talented blog writer will post about the highlights of her day, interesting events, or pressing matters on her mind. In the same way, a good novel sticks to the story, moving from plot point to plot point, not getting mired in the minutiae of daily life.
As an aside, I missed On Beauty for this month's book club. I tried reserving it from my library but there were too many holds on it, so a week ago I requested the large print edition. It only just came yesterday. I finished the first three chapters (about 100 pages in my copy of the book) and it reminded me of The Corrections, another book that I did not enjoy. Since the book club unanimously hated On Beauty, I'm glad to see I won't be missing anything by quitting while I'm ahead.
So! My secret fictional blog. It should be good practice for developing novel-writing skills. I'm making up friends, events, and places of course. Most challenging of all is writing a first-person narrator who is not me, which is a skill I desperately need to learn since currently all my male characters are thinly-veiled clones of myself. Leave aside for now the fact that all my female leads are independent, tattooed, anarcho-hipster-punk cyclists. I don't need to change that, because it's awesome.
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