The Books You Haven't Written

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In Paul Morley's excellent Nothing, a recurring notion is the books he hasn't written, which the book you read perhaps replaces (or doesn't). What books have you not written?

― Tom, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i have not written a book of poetry about people i know. I am planning it but its not done.

― anthonyeaston, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, until recently I hadn't written a book about a couple of characters I rather liked, but now that's been done. ;-) I'll have to think about the next one now.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

HO HO HO!!

(it will be ten years overdue next year)

― mark s, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have not yet written the book I have a contract to write. I have, however, *written* another one that I *don't* have a contract to publish.

Perhaps it would be best if I could somehow collapse the two and get the best features of both (can you spot what those are?).

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have written a book called "pretentious" which contains the word pretentious 40,000 times, and the following five words only once (hidden randomly within the text)...:

1. Why
2. Did
3. You
4. Buy
5. This?

It would be pretty easy to write!

― james, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't written a book about myself.

― Ally, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

my NaNoWrMo book

― Samantha, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. It wasn't me. Just so you know.

― Kerry, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My NaNoWriMo 'novel' smolders in the furnace of my mind, yet another hopeful idea dashed to bits via breech birthing. I have tons of books I haven't written; some science-fiction thingies, that Important Novel I was trying to write, possibly a Nabokov ripoff, too. It's just a matter of finding the proper state of mind in which to write the silly bastards.

― David Raposa, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I found when writing my NaNoWriMo thang that it was just a matter of first setting aside the time and then letting everything flow. It was a bit like how Dan describes setting aside a little bit of money in that other thread -- just get that started and it really does seem to take over after initial sputtering.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't written a book that does aesthetics Josh-stylee. Yet.

― Josh, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have not written a really bad science fiction novel which would just have been an excuse to indulge my wargaming fantasies.

― DV, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Easily the worst book I luckily never wrote beyond the first two chapters (lots of sex in Prague) was called "The Unofficial Thousand Yard Stare Fanclub Fanzine" - based around the premise that liking something a lot (in this case third rate baggy band Thousand Yard Stare) did not give one an good point to start writing about it.

There was also a really good heroin sub-plot which would have been so cliched that I could have just written "Zammo chased the dragon and got a smack on the nose" and it would have covered all bases.

― Pete, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think I bet someone they wouldn't be able to rewrite the bible in a year. I think it was a rewrite in the style of something but I can't remember. Like Rodney Rothman. Unfortunately we did rewrite Frankenstein, in the style of 15 years olds parodying, um, Frankenstein. It was called Frankenstein On Ice. I still find it funny, but I am not quite right.

― alix, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

At the moment I am not writing a breathtakingly beautiful love story called 'Three Years on the Edge of Sleep'. Then there's another one I'm not writing that starts 'My mother spent the seventies burping', or something like that, but I don't know whether that will end up not being a short story. It's based on the Stones compilation 'Sucking in the Seventies'. The one I'm realy proud of not writing is based on the life of the bloke who chopped Charles I's head off. Rumour has it he was from the same village as me. He had to dress up as a woman when the pendulum swung back, but got murdered anyway. Frankly I don't believe a word of it, but it's a good story to not write. I'm not going to update it and set it in the homosexual underworld of sixties London, like in that Mick Jagger film, 'Performance'. That way they wouldn't need to make a film of it, thus maintaining the chain of not doing things.

Instead of doing these things I am translating somebody else's book, the highlight so far is a brief description of the origins of the monkey puzzle tree, 'a true survivor of the prehistoric era'.

― Peter Miller, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My friend Sally and I have been planning on writing an analysis of every single Sweet Valley High book for years now.

― rosemary, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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