What am I doing?

I want to write a book, a novel, a commercial novel, a commercial novel with arty pretentions that will impress literary critics and still be a page-turning beach reader that everyone just must have or feel culturally isolated and miserable.

I used to make a living as a newspaper writer, and I was good enough that eventually I got a job making much more money to write things that sell things, as opposed to writing things that might simply amuse or inform. I miss the "writing for fun" part of that job, but not the "so poor Taco Bell seems like an extravagant night out" part.

A couple decades later, I'm a fearsome corporate warrior, in my mid-40s, charging into the final decades of my life, and I still haven't done the one thing I said I wanted to do when I was 15. I haven't written and published a good book.

One of the many book cases in my house.
This one is in my office.

I started one about a year ago. I had an idea that seemed clever, a twist on the humorous crime novel genre that has been well maintained by the likes of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. It's also what I thought would be a kind of simultaneous salute and parody of...wait for it...Ulysses. I figured why not be a smart ass and imitate one of the most important and yet impenetrable novels in the English language. Also, I thought by tweaking the cheeks of Joyce, I might get the attention of book critics who would either get the joke and praise my inventive spirit or skewer me with delicious wit, explaining how I wasn't fit to oil the revered Irishman's typewriter.

In any case, I wrote about two thirds of the thing since about July of last year. I'm at chapter 22, and just as I should be closing in on my epic climax, I'm running out of steam. Things are not coming together. The characters don't feel fully alive. The plot moves well in some places then drags and even disappears in others. I love some parts of it, but as a whole it's not working.

I then realized that I'm making a mistake. Even though I've read plenty of books on writing and writing novels and writing screenplays and writing from my soul and writing with emotion and writing with the magic formula of the week that is sure make the writer millions of dollars, I simply haven't read enough actual novels in the genre I want to write in.

So this is my plan. In order to become an expert on this genre, I'm going to stop writing the novel for a bit. I'm good to read novels. Not books on writing novels, but actual novels, mostly novels in the same genre (or close) that my book will occupy. That means crime novels, humor novels, thrillers and if there is such a thing, the humorous thriller.

I won't just be reading them. I will be digesting them, breaking them down into parts I can study and think about, searching for the elements that make them tick, that make them work or not work. Yes, several books on writing books do that for me, but they aren't helping. I need to do the work myself. I need to be immersed. I need to do the work myself.

"If you want to write, then read."

That would seem to be the smartest thing anyone in any how-to-write book has ever said. So I'm going to follow that advice.

Be warned, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! This is not a book review blog. This is a blog about dissecting popular novels so I can see their internal organs working. It will get messy. But it will be revealing. There will be no secrets. Plot twists will be untwisted and the name of the killer will be revealed, perhaps even in the first sentence of post.

So, to the 2 to 10 people who will actually go on to read this blog. Read on!

The first book I will write about is Iron House by John Hart.

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-House-ebook/dp/B004TLHPGI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1318090598&sr=1-1

I picked it because of the enthusiastic reviews on Amazon. I will be picking books either because they are wildly commercially successful, are getting 4-star or higher reader reviews, or getting great critical acclaim. Preferably, the books I read will have all three.

I'm going to read 107 books, write about them here, and then go back to writing my novel. That's my plan. It could be stupid one. I don't know yet.

Why 107 of them? Because the BlogSpot URL that was available was 107booksread.blogspot.com. 100books through 106books were taken. So it's all about 107 books.

Onward!