Can Annie Hall Make Me a Better Writer?

Writing this blog is far harder than writing my novel. On the days I blog I try to think of something interesting to write and have a difficult time doing that. So I plod on. This blog will be as much a learning experience as writing my novel is.

I'm midway through L.A. Requiem. Great book; it's probably one of Crais's best if not the best of his Elvis Cole mystery series. Read it...it's great. I'm also dissecting it, per my last blog, and I'm getting a lot of good info about putting a novel together. I'm hoping that doing this does not put me behind on finishing within the year but we'll see how that turns out.

The novel itself continues, slowly, but it continues to grow and take shape. Sort of like the Frankenstein monster, "It's alive," although it really isn't a monster. It's just a novel that sometimes drives me crazy in the process of writing it.

Thought for the night: does anyone remember Woody Allen's riff on relationships from Annie Hall? You don't? Well you've come to the right place to hear about it. Warning: I've bored many a past girlfriend with quotes from Woody Allen movies. However I love Woody Allen's films and stand unafraid of spreading ennui so here goes. Woody starts by telling a joke at the end of Annie Hall about his uncle who thought he was a chicken. People would continually ask his family why they didn't have the uncle committed. The answer: "Because we need the eggs!" Woody then goes on to draw parallels with relationships, i.e.: in most cases they don't go anywhere, we are mismatched with the person we're with and, in the end, we get nothing but pain and heartache (I'm paraphrasing). So why do we continue having relationships? You guessed it...because we need the eggs. Well damn son, writing is just about the same thing. We agonize for hours over a line or two, we read other authors who make us despair of ever writing anything that's good and we convince ourselves that no one will ever want to read our finished book (or short story, poem, etc). So why do we continue writing...

Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Monday, 13 April 2010.