NaNoWriMo: Week Two

So I'm right on schedule, though my "novel" has taken a turn for the ridiculous and some minor characters have staged a mutiny. In other words, it's officially NaNo season.

I've decided I can't be a serious writer. I mean, in the "oh teh drams" sense. But then I think of someone like David Foster Wallace, who wrote BIG SERIOUS BOOKS with LITERARY MERIT, and he was still funny. Given that's it's November, I'll stick with the funny and leave the literary merit to someone else.

I hate the words "literary fiction." There's no way around its pretentiousness and elitism. But it's what I read, and what I aspire to write. I've been dancing around it, calling my own writing "realistic, contemporary fiction" or something else non-judgmental that implies I don't write about vampires, or aliens, or murder. (Unless those vampires sat around at Dennys discussing their feelings, I'm pretty sure I'd be incapable of writing about them.) If that makes me an elitist, it's a label I'll have to own.