In Which nothing actually Happens, per se, because it's not that sort of Blog

So, if you know me or are friends with me on Facebook (and quite frankly I am surprised if you're reading this without fitting into either of these categories, but you never know, maybe someone else has been lured in by tales of my lyrical brilliance or something) then you have probably heard about the wordcount on this leviathan of a blog. Essentially, I added up all the posts (and that's just the posts on this particular blog; there are only a few scant posts from the Livejournal era) and checked the word count, which is between 77,000 and 80,000, not counting comments.

And because I'm the sort of person who wonders about these things (which is to say; someone who ought to be doing something useful)I checked, and it turns out that that's about the length of a longish mystery novel. Those usually go between 60 and 80 thousand words. This year alone I've apparently written well over 30 thousand.

So it occurs to me: wouldn't it be nice if I'd used all those words and such writing something with some kind of narrative or structure or continuity or something? (I'm sure the same thought has struck you, too, dear reader, in the wee hours when you're wasting time on the internet reading blogs rather than going to bed: "why can't she write something with any structure or meaning? Aaargh!" etc.) Isn't it a dreadful pity? If it was a goodish novel (and we may as well be charitable and assume it would've been, since it doesn't exist and the assumption costs us nothing) then it could be being sent to publishers by now! I could have been published long ago, in point of fact!

There are those who believe that everyone "has a novel in them", which I'm sure is very lovely, except for the fact that with regard to most people we'd be lucky if it was only as bad as Twilight. And that's exactly how bad it would be (if, as I said, I were lucky) if I were to try to write a novel.

It's one of those things I've always secretly rather fancied the idea of doing. (Inasmuch as I'm capable of doing anything secretly: I tend to excitedly explain all my secrets to anyone who'll listen, although I'm very good with other peoples' secrets, surprisingly) This comes with the territory of being one of those would-be-creative Arts student types. I can't play music to save my life (I can't even sing, I've recently realised, which is a great pity), and I can't much paint or any of those other sorts of things My People like to do. But a novel! Anyone can write a book, one sort of feels.

"It's just words!" you think, "I talk all the time! How hard can it be?" Plus also, a very very rare few people are fantastically successful and become very rich and popular, in an absolutely morally-impregnable sort of way. If you invent something so useful that everyone in the world wants one, it's kind of wrong to refuse to give it to them (witness the patents on the horrifyingly expensive cancer-therapies). If you merely sell a service, you don't become obscenely wealthy without ripping people off or somethign. Everywhere you tend to have the same sorts of problems, especially once you're at that end of the scale.

Essentially, something like writing a book which makes millions of people happy is the best way not to have to worry if you're somehow a terrible person for getting rich off all those people. Music maybe used to be that way, but copyright is a thorny issue there now. Also, music producers etc. would take a cut, and you have to tour and miss your family, and paparrazzi try to entrap you and the whole deal, if you're looking at all like making it really big.

So obviously this is something I should look into.
Problem is, even leaving aside the thing where it's basically impossible to get published and all that sort of thing, that I haven't an ounce of narrative in me.

I know this because I was trying to come up with some kind of script, (no, not even that, some kind of story idea) for a short film with Clever James and Exuberant Lauri recently, and for all my smug self-assurance, I didn't have a single idea. Not one. Turns out, I can write a thousand words in an hour of what I choose to think is sometimes quite alright blather about not much, but when it comes to making up an actual kernel for all this fluff, I've got nothing.

Worse, I get halfway through being all "yes! This idea is brilliant!" or whatever and only then realise that I've blantantly plagiarised something by accident. Or even a couple of things. Sometimes I get all excited about how easy it would be to do a "Bridget Jones' Diary" type thing about a girl who just happens to be quite a lot like me (or rather, how I imagine myself to be, so more someone who bears a distant resemblance to me in a good light) before I realise that even that needs a plot. Nothing all that exciting happens to me, and when it does, I'm too busy doing it to write. Also, more pressingly, I have no idea how my life ends. There are very few tied-off loose ends in my life.

Also, proper authors can make "he thought about the problem for a moment" into an 8-word sentence (rather than a 1,000 word blog post) but can make "he met the girl and they had a slightly awkward interlude and agreed to meet the following afternoon" into a 4 page dialogue, natural-sounding and so on. I find it difficult not to come straight to the point in recount events (don't all shout at once, I know, we always thought that I had some kind of allergy to coming to the point). It turns out I can digress as long as you like, but padding the actual things with "she paused to delicately scrape the teaspoon on the edge of the cup to rid it of the last lingering drop. The melodic sound of that barely-conscious habit of hers had entranced him, once, now he wondered how he had tolerated it all those years" or whatever I get all "how am I supposed to know what sort of teacup? It's not real!" I don't even think to think that, in fact, which is rather worse. When I used to write stories, back in school, all the characters sounded like me, somehow.

I've just remembered that one of the characters in that story I wrote in high school (the one where I accidentally plagiarised that actual plot elements) was a pirate captain who was described as "rugged - not ruggedly handsome, just rugged". So that's something, at least, isn't it?

Hmmm... maybe I ought to just embrace this sort of thing. There are two options:

A: try to become David Sedaris, somehow, and become very popular selling books which are essentially blog-style stream-of-consciousness memoirs, or

B: be as one with the nature of blogging and learn to listen as well as talk.

Obviously my plan here is really B with a side order of idly speculating how lovely A would be.