On The Juice

I was hanging out with my man crush today and he gave me a good idea. I guess some explanation is necessary. Jonathan Franzen is my favorite living writer. He is my literary Derek Jeter. I was in an office for a meeting earlier and they had Time Magazine. Franzen was on the cover last month for a profile for his new novel, Freedom. I haven't read Freedom, because I haven't hit a bookstore or Amazon.com since the book came out a few days ago.  The Time magazine article is here: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2010000-4,00.html

I was screwing around last night and wrote some pages that I think he wouldn't laugh too hard at before he blew his nose with them. Like Franzen, I dig literary realism. His 2001 book, The Corrections, is the '27 Yankees of 21st Century literature. The reviews for his new book, Freedom, say it's the '98 Yankees. Dude is really good at telling stories.

Franzen's work, combined with 3 hours of quiet, The Urban Hymns album from The Verve, and two or three good blog posts from some twitter friends encouraged me to take the next big step. I'm putting last night's writing together with writing from a few weeks ago, and posting them, in narrative form here: http://www.writingonsteroids.blogspot.com/ . The goal is to write every other day. I hit the gym 3 to 4 days a week and that keeps me in decent shape, I figure if I post 3 to 4 days of my stuff that should look good enough to get some feedback, grow my composition, and see if I can get a book together.

My wife says I can have neither a girlfriend or a sportscar for my midlife crisis so I am finally writing a book. I'm also getting another tattoo at the end of the month. I digress.

I feel energized, happy and strong. Turning 40 in 3 days isn't going to be so bad, I hope. By using the blog to exercise my brain, I hope to reach some goals, thought unattainable years ago. Give me a couple of days to get the site readable. This site stays functional. It's easy to maintain. I'll link both places and make things as less confusing as possible. I have another 100 word post coming with the word theme being; ROTTEN. I'll post it later tonight or tomorrow on this site.

Go get Franzen's other novels as well as Freedom. He is a genius.