Chapter 9: Finding a Publisher

“Where can I find someone to publish my metanovel?” The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator narrated the author asking himself. The author didn’t realize it, but the question was reverse-tem­ porally caused by the future draft of what at one time was the next chapter, and which, after sev­ eral rounds of editing, would end up as Chapter 11, would be titled “The Greatest Publisher In The Metauniverse,” and would appear on page 46. “What is this reverse-temporal crap?” Asked my inner critic. “I’m not quite sure what it is,” the author answered, “but if I wrote it, it means something. I’ll figure it out or delete it.” “I’ll bet it’s stupid,. said my inner critic. But it wasn’t stupid. The author eventually figured out reverse-temporal causation and would slightly more eventually write about it in what would a bit more eventually be Chapter called Reality And The Flow Of Time and which, many drafts later and most eventually of all would wind up on page 69. “I keep hoping this will eventually make sense,” said my inner critic. “I keep being disap­ pointed.” The chapter in which he finds a publisher will be a critical chapter, the Not Quite Omni­ scient Narrator knew and narrated, but for reasons that the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator doesn’t quite know, and doesn’t quite know why it doesn’t quite know, the chapter will be quite different than the author believed that he thought he had planned and the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator had believed it had originally narrated. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator didn’t know because it didn’t know and and couldn’t know that Metaomniscient Metanarrators, like the one currently metanarrating, can narrate changes—like the one being narrated and another that will appear sub­ sequently and as a consequence of this metanarration—into metanovels, like the one you are reading, by narrating the changes in 11 point URW Bookman L Italic which not- quite omniscient narrators don’t and can’t know is the one type face that they don’t know and can’t know that they don’t and can’t know how to read. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator was embarrassed to narrate that it had momentarily lost its train of narration, and narrated its feeling that something important that should have been nar­ rated had not, and that it didn’t quite know what it was. After a few moments reflection it seemed sensible to narrate the end of the chapter, which abruptly and prematurely Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for D*mmies