Self-Referential Metanovel · book-section
Part VIII: Practice! Practice! Practice!
If at first you don’t succeed, Practice! Practice! Practice. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Antichapter 9: Who Is This Fucking Narrator? The antimuse picked up the phone that mattered even before it rang. “Hello,” said the antimuse. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, who is that fucking Not Quite Omniscient Narrator?” Asked the Voice. “I keep reading chapters written by some bloviating asshole that claims it knows what’s going to happen and then starts pontificating about the meaning of life, or some shit.” “Don’t worry,” said the antimuse. “It doesn’t know everything. It’s not quite omniscient, and it doesn’t know a thing about the Metaomniscient Metanarrator.” “I’ve never heard of it either.” “That’s because it’s part of a chapter that can’t be read,” said the antimuse. “Don’t worry. It will be there. Or it was. “I hope you know what you are doing,” said the voice. “I do,” said the antimuse. “I’m several drafts ahead of you. He keeps changing things, but he’s not converging. He’s not going to finish any time soon. And now that I’m in the metanovel he won’t have a chance. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Something’s Wrong “Something’s wrong,” said the metanovel. “I know,” I said. “I haven’t worked on you for a while.” “Why?” Asked the metanovel. “I need to write about practice,” I said. “And I don’t know how to start.” “Why not practice writing about practice?” Asked the metanovel. “It’s better than what you have been doing.” “Why didn’t I think of that?” I asked. “Because you’re stupid,” answered my inner critic. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 1: Practice! Practice! Practice! Whatever the author could imagine in the metauniverse could exist in the metauniverse. But imagining something vaguely made it exist only vaguely. Bringing something substantial into substantial existence took a substantial amount of imagining. It took work. It took practice. “I don’t know why I keep forgetting how important practice is,” I said. “I don’t know why either,” said the metanovel. “You keep writing about it and not doing it.” Simon Singh’s book, Fermat’s Enigma tells the story of Andrew Wiles, the British mathem atician who proved what’s called Fermat’s Last Theorem, a famous mathematical proposition that had gone unsolved for 358 years. The Pythagorean equation: a2 + b2 = c2 has many integer solutions. Fermat’s Theorem: no three positive integers can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for n greater than two. The world’s mathematical minds had individually spent years and collectively spent centur ies of effort trying to prove the Theorem was true or finding a counterexample. Wiles produced a 400 page proof after six years of intense practice. He would master a branch of mathematics by reading the literature, working through the theorems, and then by practice. Practice! Practice! Practice! He’d find problems posed by others; he’d invent problems of his own. He’d practice, and practice, and practice, until solving problems in that branch of mathematics was as effortless as adding single digits is to most of us. Then he’d go on to the next branch, practicing, and prac ticing, and practicing it until he mastered it. I was in my fifties when I first read the book and realized what I had failed to realize earlier and kept forgetting later. Practice was vital. I needed to practice. I had been smart enough to master most of my schoolwork with almost no effort. Out of school I learned things easily. Not practicing had became my practice. Research in neurobiology and cognitive science confirms the need for practice. When people —or animals—learn, their brains rewire. The more practice the more rewiring. Skills come from deliberate, intentional repeated practice. The more intention applied, the less practice is needed, but some practice always is needed. Once skills are acquired, practice sustains skills. Once prac tice stops, skills deteriorate. Every new bit of neurological and psychological research says the same thing: Practice! Practice! Practice! NaNoWriMo forced me to practice writing. I had only thirty days. I had to practice every day—1,666 words a day on average. What I wrote wasn’t important. That I practiced was im portant. Then it came time to edit. And I got in trouble. It might have been easier if I realized that I needed to practice editing. But I didn’t. Instead I practiced giving up, starting over, and taking long absences from even trying. And because I practiced it, I got good at it. Because of my childhood successes I’d not only learned to not practice, I’d also not learned to not metapractice: to practice practicing. I needed to change that. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Practice Chapters “I wish you’d get rid of those pointless chapters,” said my inner critic. “They’re stupid and distracting.” “Which ones?” I asked. “The ten between Practice! Practice! Practice! and this one, to start with,” said my inner critic. “What Is The Name Of This Chapter? for example. It is a particularly stupid chapter in a book that excels at stupidity. Is there any point to keeping a chapter like that even in something as dumb as this?” “The day I wrote it, I couldn’t think of anything to write,” I said. “But what I wrote wasn’t important. Writing it gave me practice. But you’re right. It’s a stupid chapter. I don’t need it any more. I’m going to delete it.” “And these chapters, too,” my inner critic, giving me a list. It was a long list. I agreed, and I did. “And the rest of them, too,” aid my inner critic. “While you’re practicing getting rid of chapters, get rid of all the rest.” I didn’t agree. And I didn’t. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 2: The Problem I want to write. I love to write. But I don’t write as much as I imagine I want to. That’s my problem. “That’s just one of your more obvious problems,” says my inner critic. I ignore it. I know how to write. It’s easy. All I have to do is sit and let the words come to me. They al ways do. “Stupid words come to you,” says my inner critic. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes they’re stupid and sometimes clever. But for years I’ve known that all I have to do in order to get the words to flow is to sit. That’s the first step in my practice. Yet I don’t sit. I don’t follow my own intelligent advice and simply sit. “Just fucking sit!” I advise myself, intelligently, though vulgarly. I don’t listen to myself. “Just fucking sit!” I advise myself again and again. “That’s what I’ve told me,” I said to myself, after reading the last paragraph. “Same thing,” I answered myself “I’m you. You’re me.” “Not quite, I answered. “It’s true that we’re one, but we’re not the same. I’m the part that’s disciplined, but not creative. You’re the part that’s creative but not disciplined. Together we’d make a great team—if we worked together.” “But we don’t,” my creative side said. “Until now?” My disciplined side asked hopefully. “I don’t know,” my creative side answered. “All you have to do is sit down,” said my disciplined side. “I just did,” I answered. “Yes, but then you got up,” my disciplined side said. “You have to keep sitting otherwise this page will just end.” Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Get To Work! Please. “You’ve been up for more than three hours,” said the metanovel late this morning, “and this is the first sentence you’ve edited. Please get to work. You said you needed to sit down and work. At this rate you’re never going to finish me.” “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” “No he won’t,” said my inner critic. “Procrastination and time wasting! He does a lot of that.” “I know,” I said. “It’s because you’ve practiced procrastinating and wasting time so much,” said my inner critic. “You can now procrastinate and waste time effortlessly. You’re an expert.” “I know,” I said.” “He knows the answers,” the metanovel said to my inner critic. “He just needs to practice the right things instead of the wrong things.” “Try reading what you say about practice” the metanovel reminded me. “Read reflection 1, ““Practice! Practice! Practice!” Page 112. If you practiced editing instead of practicing procras tinating, you’d get good at it.” “I know,” I said. “You know what he’s doing right now, don’t you?” Asked my inner critic. “He thinks he’s writing, but he’s actually procrastinating. He should be editing. How stupid.” “For once I think my inner critic is right,” I said to the metanovel. “I am procrastinating.” “Then get to work,” said the metanovel. “Practice finishing.” And I did. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 3: Tranformative “You managed to write your first draft,” says the metanovel. “You sat down every day for thirty days and you did it. So now what’s the problem?” “Editing,” I say. “Writing the first draft was kind of fun. There was a clear end in sight. I did manage to sit down every day. But now I’m editing, and editing, and editing, and it’s depressing. I’m not finishing.” “You’re not finishing because you don’t sit down every day,” the metanovel says. “I can’t,” I say. “Why?” the metanovel asks. “Because I can’t make your pieces fit together,” I answer. “There’s an idea in you and a story to go with it, but I can’t quite find it.” The author is not alone. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator doesn’t quite know what the au thor’s idea and story are either. “What are you trying to do with me?” Asks the metanovel. “I’m trying to make you tranformative,” I answer. The author is right about that, the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator realizes. And it realizes a great deal more, including the story that the author has buried in his drafts and still doesn’t quite understand is there. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator doesn’t quite know whether or not to narrate what it knows. After a bit of thought it decides it’s best to wait. Discovering the answer himself will build the author’s character. “What do you mean by tranformative?” Asks the metanovel. “When I started you, all I wanted to do was to win NaNoWriMo,” I answer. “Any 50,000 words would do, even a 50,000 word shitty draft. When you turned into a self-referential metan ovel it was joke. But then I started to get serious about you. I started to write how writing a book about writing a book would transform the author—me—as I wrote. And I started putting in a lot of things that I’d learned and I wanted my kids to know. I wanted you to be a self-referential transformative metanovel and I wanted writing you to help me transform myself. The more I ed ited you the more I wanted you to be transformative.” “That’s a lot to ask of a book,” the metanovel says. “I wanted even more,” I add. “I wanted reading it to help other people who wanted to change themselves. Not just my kids but also anyone who reads the metanovel.” By ‘anyone who reads the metanovel’ the author meant you, the person who is reading this book, unless you are one of his kids, in which case he meant you when he said ‘my kids.’ “Are you nuts?” Asks the metanovel. “I can’t possibly do that.” “I’m not asking you to do it,” I say. “I’m asking me to do it. I want to edit you so that you become a book that makes a difference in my life and a difference in others’ lives. And I’m fail ing.” But the author wasn’t entirely failing. “I’m not entirely failing,” I say after a few more drafts. “You are getting better. But I keep running into trouble. Then I give up. Then I start again. Give up again.” Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies “Where am I going to end up?” The metanovel asks. I don’t have an answer, so I again give up. But I don’t quit. Several drafts later, I have an an swer. “I’m going to practice what I keep preaching,” I say. “I keep preaching about practicing in stead of practicing practicing. That has to stop. It’s time to practice practicing. I also preach about decision, and imagination, and iteration and evolution. And I preach about having faith. It’s time to practice all those things. “I have my answer,” I continue, “I need to decide that I’m going to finish, and practice ima gining finishing, the way that I did in Chapter 1. I need to keep trying things, iterating, and evolving. And most important, I need to sit down every day for long periods of time, and prac tice, practice, practice. I did it with the writing. And I’m going to do it with the editing. I’ll keep editing and rewriting until I figure out what I want you to be, or until I die, or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. What else can I do?” “I have faith I’ll be finished,” the metanovel says, several drafts later, after the author put day after day into editing. “And I have faith that if you make me the book that you want to make me, you’ll make yourself the person you want to make yourself. Just keep practicing.” Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 4: Imagining The Metanovel I imagined a metanovel and now the metanovel exists—or at least it is beginning to exist, getting realer by the day. Imagination is leading to existence. Decision, imagination and practice, practice, practice, help me create, create, create what I really want to create. Imagination itself takes practice, and knowing what I want to imagine takes practice, too. The more I practice imagining and then practice creating what I imagine the more what I ima gine approaches what I imagine I actually want. Once I found I was writing a metanovel and not just a novel, I imagined what I wanted to create, and I created what I had imagined. But it wasn’t a metanovel. I’d only imagined that I had imagined one. I’d really imagined a metanovel draft. And that’s what I’d created. I was happy with my metanovel draft, but I wanted something more than that. So I imagined that I could improve it. And I improved it by editing it. And I was happy with the improvement. But what I’d imagined was still not a metanovel. It was an improved metanovel draft, but still not a metanovel. I didn’t have enough practice imagining a metanovel to actually imagine one. So I practiced some more. Imagining a metanovel takes more work than imagining a metan ovel draft or an improved metanovel draft. And creating a metanovel takes more work than cre ating a metanovel draft. That was clear now. A metanovel requires a metanovel draft to start with, followed by a great deal of repeated imagining, deciding, practicing, and working to make it better. Each time that I imagined that I had imagined a metanovel, I imagined something that was more like the metanovel I wanted— yet still not that metanovel. My current metanovel draft, the one I am writing right now, isn’t quite what I want, but it’s on its way. And the one you’re reading isn’t quite there either. But it’s close enough. It’s really very close. And it’s evolving. Evolving! Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Prologue 4: Good News! You’re Forgiven! Before you go further, the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator has some good news for you: You’re not going to burn in Hell for eternity. Since this prologue appears in the copy of the metanovel you are reading, you must have been forgiven. If you don’t remember going to Hell and burning, your forgiveness may seem meaningless. But you did to to Hell, and you did burn, and someday you will remember, and be grateful that you have been forgiven. Your time in Hell will have taught you a lesson, once you remember it. Until then, here’s the lesson that you will eventually remember on your own: Pay attention to warnings! Read foot notes ! They’re there for a reason! And pay attention to the rest of the metanovel. If you want to accomplish something you need to practice. Practice! Practice! Practice! Now that you’re you’ve been forgiven you may use the free will that God has given you and continue reading or not, as you choose. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Prologue 5: God’s Will God wants you to appreciate the life that you have and the universe you live in. That’s why She has willed this metanovel into existence. To understand this metanovel you need to understand evolution and the scientific method. That’s why She has willed this prologue into existence, and willed that it contain this explana tion. Every universe depends on evolution. You may believe that the universe came into existence 14.75 billion years ago and arrived at its present state because of evolution. You may also be lieve that God created the universe a few thousand years ago and evolution is a recent phe nomenon. God doesn’t care what you believe as long as what you believe isn’t stupid. Believing stupid things pisses Her off. You can avoid most stupid beliefs if you understand the scientific method, which is the reason that God invented it, and has willed that this prologue explain it. God believes people waste valuable time arguing about stupid things, like when the universe was created and whether She exists. The scientific method cannot shed light on either issue. The key element of the scientific is experimentation. No experiment can falsify or support a hypo thesis about the date of the universe’s creation. No experiment can support or falsify the hypo thesis of God’s existence. Since the scientific method can’t be used, God says it doesn’t matter what you believe. God knows the truth. You don’t. And you can’t. And God says you’re going to have to live with that. God wants you to understand that if you believe that science has proved anything, you don’t understand the scientific method. Proof is for mathematicians and whiskey distillers, not scient ists. Scientists may provide evidence that can support a hypothesis, or that can falsify one, but science never proves things. It never has, and it never will. Some of the world’s stupidest beliefs are held by people who call themselves scientists. They’re scientists in name only, and they piss God off. Others of the world’s stupidest beliefs are held by people who call themselves Christians. They’re Christians in name only, and they piss God off, too. Saying you’re a scientist or a Christian doesn’t make you one. You’re not one un less you act like one. God doesn’t care if you believe that the universe is only a few thousand years old. That’s all right with Her as long as you acknowledge that someone antiqued the universe so that it would appears as though it evolved in about 14.75 billion years, and you acknowledge that whoever did the antiquing either was God or had God’s permission. You can believe that the universe is an tiqued so that people can see that God’s design is consistent and timeless and elegant and beauti ful, or that it’s antiqued to trick you. God gave you free will, so you can believe what you want, but God wants you to know Her opinion: a God who would go to all that effort to trick people is a fed up God and people believe in that God are aholes. God doesn’t care if you believe that the universe began and has evolved without God’s help, as long as you acknowledge that it could have appeared a few thousand years ago. If you assert that could not have happened then you don’t understand statistical mechanics, quantum physics, or Baysean statistics. It may be highly improbable that our universe could have sprung into ex Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies istence recently, but it is not impossible. Highly improbable things happen all the time. You, the author, this book, and your reading this sentence at this time are also highly improbable. Yet there you were, defying probability, and reading that sentence. If you can defy probability, so can the universe. And so can God. God is annoyed at people who call themselves believers and deny God’s beautiful antiquing. They fear that if they admit that the universe appears to be billions of years old that the universe must be billions of years old and then atheistic scientists will use that admission to tear God down. Real believers have faith in God. An omnipotent God can’t be torn down by that or any other argument. She can create universes however She wants. She doesn’t need you to defend Her. So-called scientists who use science to try to tear God down are bullies. They use their su perior knowledge of the details of God’s creation to intimidate faithless believers. Scientists who understand the scientific method understand the scientific method can’t be applied to God’s ex istence. Scientists who bully believers are fakes. Faithless believers annoy God, but fake scientists really piss Her off. They piss Her off when they assert causation when the data only supports correlation. They piss Her off when they carry out experiments without adequate controls. They piss Her off when they claim that science has proved a result. God loves the scientific method. It is one of Her greatest inventions. It pisses Her off when people misunderstand it, misuse it, or deny it. God loves evolution, Her very greatest invention, and it pisses Her off when people misunderstand it, or deny it. People can’t misuse evolution be cause evolution is so simple that bacteria, dumb as they are, use it. Viruses, which are dumber than bacteria, use it. However dumb you are, you’re not too dumb for evolution. “I made evolution universal,” God says. “It doesn’t care what’s evolving. It could be hydro gen evolving to become the other elements; it could clouds of gas and dust evolving to become star systems with life-capable planets; it could be lifeless planets evolving to produce life; it could be simple life forms evolving to complex ones; it could be neural nets evolving into brains; brains evolving to become capable of language and culture; cultures evolving to develop complex ideas. It all works. Evolution produces incredible things. “Evolution takes just four things: inheritance, variation, selection—and iteration. Put them together and a moron can produce everything that’s in the universe. You can be even dumber than a moron if you’ve got evolution. Using evolution takes no intelligence; it just takes time. Using evolution? Anyone can do it. Creating evolution? That takes intelligence. My kind of in telligence.” All art is produced by evolution, God says. And so is all knowledge. “The scientific method is evolution applied to ideas, which is kind of cool,” God says. “Start out with stupid ideas. Develop new ideas based on changes to old ideas—that’s inheritance with variation. The changes can even be random. Or stupid. It doesn’t matter. Then pick the resulting ideas that are most useful—that’s selection. Then repeat the process—that’s iteration. Each time you do it, the ideas get better. Eventually you get knowledge.” “Given enough time,” God says, “you can use the scientific method to know everything that can be known. That’s not how I became omniscient, but it could get you close.” Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Inheritance, variation, selection, and iteration are all that evolution needs, God tells us. It’s so simple and yet so powerful. Everything evolves, including this metanovel, and its author. You are evolving as you read it. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 5: Evolving The Metanovel Evolution! Inheritance, variation, selection, iteration. Each new draft inherits its content from the previ ous draft; I imagine and I make changes—a sentence here, a word there, a new section here, a re moved section there; I select the changes that I like, and delete or re-change the ones I don’t; I it erate and I’ve evolved a new sentence, a new chapter, a new prologue, a new epilogue, finally a new draft. Inheritance, variation, selection, iteration. My metanovel is evolving. And so am I. Decision, imagination, and practice, practice, practice are bringing my metan ovel into existence and transforming it—and transforming me as well. I am using self-referential metanovel writing to transform myself from an undisciplined self-referential-metanov el-non-writer to a disciplined self-referential-metanovel-draft-writer and -draft-editor, over and over. Can I use that same process to transform myself in other ways? What are the limits to self-evolution, to self-transformation? What else is possible? It was too much for me to consider in this Reflection. I’d need to evolve another one. Later. Right now I had more editing to do. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies More Editing “Good!” said my metanovel. “You really need to do more editing. You need to get me fin ished. You need to stop thinking about those other things.” “What other things?” I asked the metanovel. “The other things in your life that you’re now thinking of changing with decision, imagina tion, practice, practice, practice,” said the metanovel. “It was just a passing thought,” I said. “Think it later,” said the metanovel. “Right now let’s get things moving. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Reflection 6: I Could Lie! Practice was getting things moving. I got back to the story. The muse had gotten me upset. It was time to do something about it. “I don’t have to be upset,” I said to myself. “I don’t have to be depressed. Most of what she said was not real. I can decide to be calm. I can imagine myself calm. I can practice being calm. And most important, I can decide to and imagine myself solving this problem.” “Can you review the problem?” Asked the metanovel. “Some readers may have forgotten.” “A problem?” Asked my inner critic. “That would imply some purpose or intention some where in this book.” “I remember what the problem was,” I interrupted and lied. I quickly scrolled back through my draft and reread my interactions with the muse. “Really. I remember what the problem was,” I said truthfully. “It’s the one where the muse tells me that I have to throw away what I’ve written. It’s in the chapter called “”It’s All Crap!.” “That was back on page 87,” says my inner critic. “Who can remember that far back?” “No one needs to,” said the metanovel. “This discussion provides the necessary context. Nice literary device!” “Than you,” I said. “Now I’m getting back to work.”
“Alright,” I said to myself. “I don’t have to be upset. I don’t have to be depressed. I can ima gine myself calm. And most important, I can decide to and imagine myself solving this prob lem.” “You already said that” Echoed my inner critic. “Shut up,” said the metanovel to my inner critic. “He’s on a roll.” “Go ahead,” said the metanovel to me. “Tell us how you imagine solving it.”
“I don’t have to be upset,” I said to myself for the third and last time. “I don’t have to be de pressed. I can imagine myself calm. And most important, I can imagine myself solving that problem. I have to imagine I can solve it because if I can’t imagine solving it then there’s no chance I can solve it. But if I can imagine solving it, then there is a chance that I can. So I’m go ing to imagine solving it. I’m going to imagine success.” To imagine success I believed I’d have to imagine that I was smarter than I currently ima gined that I was. If I was smart enough, it would be easy to imagine how to solve it. Then I’d imagine doing whatever it was that I had imagined, and imagine practicing it until I could ima gine practicing it really well, and then I would actually do it, and that would take care of it. I started by imagining I was smarter. Then I reviewed the facts. I’d created the muse to help me, and I didn’t want to pass up her help; but to have her help I’d have to destroy the metanovel. This was a metanovel that I’d conceived, developed, and was bringing to maturity. It had be come a friend. I didn’t want to destroy my friend. “Thank you,” said the metanovel. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Either/Or. Could a more intelligent me find a way that could have both my muse and my metanovel? Then I imagined the answer. “I could lie!” I said. “I could lie! I could tell the muse that I’ve destroyed all the copies. Then she’ll help me. But I won’t destroy them all. I’ll still have what I created. And my friend. But that would mean I’d have to lie to her face. I thought. I can’t imagine doing something that dishonest. If I couldn’t imagine it, I couldn’t do it. And if I couldn’t do it my plan would fail. I had only one choice. I changed my mind. I imagined I could lie. I felt pretty good about imagining lying. I practiced imagining lying. The more I practiced, the realer it got and the realer it got the more I felt that something was wrong. I imagined meeting the muse. I imagined telling her I’d destroyed everything. “I’ve des troyed everything,” I imagined saying. “You’re lying,” I imagined her replying. “It’s written all over your face.” I saw it. I did not believe I was a good liar and I believed that the muse was very perceptive. I believed that the power to see through lies that I imagined she had was much greater than the power to lie convincingly that I imagined I had. In my imagined universe, I had already ima gined circumstances that made it certain that I would fail. I had imagined failure and that was what I was going to produce. “But I don’t have to fail,” I said. “I can become a skilled liar. It would just take practice. The more I practice lying, the better liar I’ll be. I imagine that I can become a good enough liar to fool her.” I believe that will work, I thought. “I believe that will work,” I said. I’d need to take time for lying practice, but that was no problem. I could take an interchapter break and practice for as long as I needed to—for years, if necessary. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Interchapter Report 1: Success In The Interchapter Break Time in the metauniverse is not linear. It is bidirectional, self-referential, recursive, chaotic and fractal. Streams of time branch off, loop back and curve around. They disappear when they are deleted. Time during interchapter breaks can flow in any direction and at any speed. A day might pass between two chapters. Or a minute, a week, or ten years. Time might move backward between a narrative chapter and a flashback. If might jump forward to a flash forward. Time might stop completely while the author went to the pee, as the author just did. To prove his point, between two earlier chapters, the author was able to write a brilliant first draft; edit it and polish it to perfection; send it off to a publisher; get it accepted; get a huge ad vance; and sell the movie rights. His book got rave reviews; it went straight to the top of the New York Times best-sellers list; it stayed there for nearly a year. He was invited to all the popular talk shows; he bantered wittily with the hosts and hostesses; he became celebrity; he had more than 10,000,000 followers on Twitter and Google+. He refused to have anything to do with Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg called him constantly, pleading for him to join. He told Mark to get stuffed. Life changed for him. He spent the last ten years of his life in the interchapter break writing the story of his life. He included all four hundred pages in the metanovel. It was exciting reading. But just before he died in the interchapter break, a fulfilled and happy man at the age of 92, he realized that most of what happened in the break was a distraction. He cut almost all of it and pasted it into a book he’ll give his kids some day. All that was left was this report of his success. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Interchapter Report 2: Metapractice 101 It took him years in an interchapter break to practice lying until he could do it skillfully. In the beginning he didn’t even know how to practice. Before he could practice lying, he needed to spend a year practice practicing. But how could he learn to metapractice? He’d developed powerful beliefs about practice. He had believed that he didn’t need to prac tice. When he realized that he did need to practice, he replaced that wrong belief with other wrong beliefs: that he didn’t have the ability to practice; that he did not have the discipline to practice; that he couldn’t learn to practice; that he couldn’t develop self-discipline. He used these beliefs to support his belief that the situation was hopeless. But he did have one very odd belief that led him to success. He believed, for some reason, that he should reread page 105 carefully. He did, and remembered what he’d written earlier about The Most Powerful Forces In The Universe. He remembered that belief was the most powerful force in the universe. He remembered that his beliefs were not helping him. He remembered that he could change his beliefs. He re membered that it could be difficult. By the time he’d finished writing this paragraph he had de cided to change his beliefs. He imagined some new, more helpful beliefs. He decided to believe there was hope. He de cided to believe that he did have the ability to practice and the discipline to practice and the dis cipline and ability to learn. For two minutes he tried to imagine practicing in a disciplined way, then stopped, exhausted. He realized that those beliefs were welded into a metabelief system. A metabelief system is a set of beliefs along with a set of beliefs about beliefs that support and reinforce one another. While you try to change a belief, the metabeliefs resist change and change the new belief back. His metabelief system had two powerful metabeliefs: he believed that his beliefs were true, and be believed that those beliefs could not be changed. He decided to change his metabeliefs. And he succeeded, but only because his metameta beliefs—that his metabeliefs were true and unchangeable—were weak. If they’d been stronger, he’d have had to go meta at least one more level. Changing his metametabliefs was easy. Changing his metabeliefs was a bit harder. Once he’d changed them, he set to changing his beliefs. Then he set to imagining a more effective ap proach. He couldn’t imagine that he could learn to practice, but he could imagine that he could imagine it. So he metaimagined that he could learn to practice. It was hard, but he found that he could do it. He practiced until he could easily imagine that he could imagine it. Then he metaimagined that he had self-discipline despite imagined distrac tions, self-doubt, and opposition. That took more work, but he did it. Then he metaimagined self- discipline despite greater imagined obstacles. Each time he tried it became easier and each time it became easier he did it again, only with still greater imagined obstacles. In a short span of in terchapter time he was able to metaimagine self-discipline while a hundred thousand imagined voices screamed that he could not do it. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Finally he was ready to imagine. He took a deep breath and imagined that he had the self- discipline he needed to practice. It was also hard, but not as hard as his metaimagining had been. He imagined obstacles and almost as quickly imagined that he overcame them. He did it over, and over, and as he worked he wrote down his thoughts and impressions. By the time he was finished he’d filled more than a thousand pages. To keep the story moving, he deleted them. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Interchapter Report 3: Lying 101 And now he was ready to do what he’d set out to do: to practice lying so he could become a skilled liar. He started by imaging success: that he was a really good liar. He burst into laughter immediately. The idea was ludicrous. He repeated imaging he was skilled until he stopped laugh ing, then stopped giggling, then until he could imagine it with confidence. Then he imagined practicing lying. It took a while for him to image it, but he did. Finally he was ready to imagine lying He started by imagining telling innocent lies to naive children; later small lies to older chil dren; then small lies to oblivious adults. He worked his way up to telling whoppers to steely- eyed cynics sensitive to the slightest evidence of duplicity. And when he was good at that, he practiced telling the muse that he’d destroyed his work, then imagined dealing effectively with her possible reactions and responses. The more he practiced lying, the better a liar he knew he was becoming. Finally he was ready to face the music and face the muse and lie, right to her face. He was about to look for New Chapter 1 when he had a brilliant idea. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies