Copyright © 2013 Bob R Bogle
I've spent the last week thinking
about the ultimate narrative structure that Memphis
Blues Again should take. Thinking
about it a lot. Trying to devise a
scheme by which this Brobdingnagian human ballad can function as an aesthetic
whole. I hesitate to say "function
as a novel." I'm doubtful that the
word "novel" captures what I have in mind. I don't think of it as a novel anymore,
although this vast, spreading slab of story will all be witnessed through the
eyes (and other sensory and cognitive apparatus) of fictional characters.
The least common denominator of
everything that happens in this book is geography. Locations in space. As far as locating events in time, that's a
more problematic matter. For that reason
I've abandoned concerning myself with sequentiality; in fact, freeing myself
from the shackles of strict cause and effect ought to make this a good deal
easier to write; to read, well, we'll see.
The thing about a book is that it is
a linear device: one long chant, first
word to last. And I do want this to be a
linear book, not a multi-layered collection of sedimentary stories cross-connected
by hyperlinks. So everything has to
accrue in a manner that will make a certain amount of sense to the reader, even
if the logic only comes clear incrementally.
Bearing this in mind, I've just divided the whole arc into fifty modules
– I won't call them chapters. These
modules are simply intended to be blocks of notes and text. I'm about to begin hacking up my first draft
and redistributing it into these fifty modules, to which more notes and text
will also be added. When all that is
done I'll start taking on these modules one by one, trying to shape them all
into readable stories that all tie together.
It's almost as if I'm about to take the entire first draft, chew it up
and swallow it, digest it into its fundamental elements, and try to
reconstitute an entirely new body out of it.
I've never tried writing this way
before. I guess we'll find out what comes of
it.
