A Blog Post from February 13, 1976

I came across this entry in the 1976 journal and it seems as if it would’ve been a perfect blog post at the time. Short and to the point, it describes the beginning, after six months of notes and outlines, of the 1,587-page typewritten rough draft of my first real novel, 1976-1978, which I only titled Akard Drearstone sometime afterward. We had just moved from a cramped apartment to a rented house four days earlier and I felt I could finally think and expand.

After all the trite and momentous journal and scrapbook entries, I began the novel last night, the first chapter, “Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

Well, I probably won’t have a writer’s block through all this–the only thing that stops me is physical fatigue–my mind could go on forever with it, except that I do get mentally weary of concept structures, unless they are particularly good.

My concern is not that I can’t write it, the house is great for writing & I will have time. But I’m concerned that the whole effort will be permeated by this Vonnegut-Brautigan cuteness which I really hate but which seems to perform automatically. Humor is fine, but it must be used as a tool like everything else. I want the effort to be cold and hard & precise. Not exactly “serious.” The first draft I’m going to blow apart, fight against my shallow tendencies. The second, condense it.

Influence of Kafka through this. A little fucky, but there is something to be learned from this “imitation.” I will ride with it for a while, then shake him.

The note presciently outlined a concern that was only resolved by writing the novel: the schism between seriousness and humor, left from my Wiess Crack editor days at Rice; should I write and publish dire, turgid, literary creations, or have fun with bizarre, even trivial concepts? Somehow Akard merged them into one expressive voice.

The first draft was much influenced by the style of whatever author I happened to be reading at the time: Kafka, Mailer, Dostoyevsky–as well as the New English Bible.

I’ve made no changes to the entry except to capitalize sentences; I usually left them lowercase in the journal. The photo shows the original final manuscript, 661,581 words after scanning to Word, and the published 2017 paperback, 122,360 words, or 18.5% of the rough draft. A much tighter and more focused novel.