So it begins

I have participated in the now-almost-venerable National Novel Writing Month four times in the last six years, but only won the first year, for various pathetic reasons.

Over the years I have at various times run across the notion that those who wish to create fiction should themselves abstain from, or at least moderate, their consumption of others' fiction.

I literally cannot remember a time in my life when the printed English page was a mystery to me, and have been a complete fiction junkie since first my mother read to my sister and I... Right now the book that stands out from this time is Thom Roberts' The Magical Mind Adventure of Hannah and Coldy Coldy for some reason, but I've probably not even thought of that book in 30 years. Probably some kind of .Griffths Consistent History thing -- my personal Griffithimacator obviously being set on shuffle...

Which brings me to my last dose of literary fiction, which I did not choose to be my last but was rather just the piece I happened to be reading when I came up, only hours ago, with this idea/resolution/long slow path to madness. It is The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq, a book I chose out of curiosity not about the "controversial French author dude who's being compared to Camus or Celine" in circles far from mine, but rather about this guy who has just recently published a biography of H.P. Lovecraft that everybody I don't know but wish I did is talking about.

At any rate...

As anyone who knows of Houellebecq (and for those who don't, well just check out the name, the spelling of which I keep having to verify by checking the book cover) can already imagine, this is quite a book from which to launch on a fiction fast, loaded up as it is with entomologically, biochemically, mathematically, physically precise descriptions of the decay of dead bodies, the development of breasts and, if the jacket copy do not lie, an engineering project that makes dead bodies and breasts irrelevant to human consciousness or some such -- that last bit being the most fictional aspect of the book (I'm always, aren't you, a little curious whenever new books get published with the phrase "a novel" right on the cover. Says all kinds of strange things about what the modern publishing industry thinks of our credulity as book buyers [or in my case, inter-library loan harpies], doesn't it?). Which is a long way of saying that it could easily be argued that my fast has already sort of begun, maybe. We shall see. I'm only on Chapter 12 "A Balanced Diet."

So, once I'm through this one, no more novels/comic books/magazine short stories until after I've completed my 50,000+ words in November.

Ah, but what indeed about my viewing habits, the canny might ask?

First of all, I'm part of that small and shrinking population who neither subscribes to cable or satellite nor fusses with rabbit ears or other devices that would permit me to take in free or pay TV. I have a set, but it is hooked up to A) A VCR and B) A Sony Xbox, meaning that I exercise total control over what it plays and when it plays it, pulling programming from my personal library of VHS/DVD goodness, the wonderful world of Xbox games, and Netflix, now offering levels of subscription that allow one to have as many as nine movies out at a time. Ever the seeker after moderation, my account allows for seven, which is just about right.

I just, therefore, spent a good 45 minutes or so rearranging my humongous queue (over 400, which means I'm good to go, at current usage patterns, for a good year and a half of viewing over all) so that all the documentary films and non-fiction series collections are now on top. Lost: Season 2 will have to wait, as will Battlestar Galactica 2.5 and that Fassbinder film I finally decided to have a peek at. My Night at Maud's has been postponed for several months. I must content myself with films about, rather than by, Werner Herzog (lucky for me, there are plenty of both!).

David Attenborough and Simon Schama, Ken Burns and Michael Palin, James Burke and Godfrey Reggio, Nova and Frontline and National Geographic will dominate my screen for a while -- and I think it will be all right. Schama especially is already a big part of my current intake, as his Landscape and Memory currently sits in my bookbag along with the Houellebecq and with Yellowcake Towns by Michael Amundson, which I picked up for information and inspiration for my projected NaNoWriMo novel this year, set in a Wyoming boomtown in the 1970s (at least until I change my mind about everything and set it on the moon instead) (or in an alternate natural history of the Platte Valley) (or something else).

Can I do it? Will I bother? Watch this space and see!