The Spoons That Are My Ears!

In recent days I have been filled with an urge to write an OuLiPo novel. The last thing I need at this stage is to add yet another project to the list of projects I'm working on, but clearly it wants to be written. There's no point trying to resist an urge that feels so inevitable and apt!

Anyway, I already have a title for the novel, Comfy Rascals, and it will be a showcase of OuLiPo techniques, some standard, some devised by myself. I have just planned a section involving word ladders, which is a type of puzzle that seems ideally suited to the logical and linguistic constraints that are the essential basis of all OuLiPo projects. For instance, plot development in most fictional stories relies on the logic of everyday causality, but I intend to use the logic of word association instead, so the characters in this section of the book might encounter the following objects or activities in a strict order imposed by the rules of word ladder construction: Games, Gapes, Capes, Copes, Cores, Corps, Coops, Crops, Cross, Cress, Chess. Constraints like this serve to force the mind to think laterally and break the tendency of an author to rely on familiar patterns when devising a plot.

I know that writing Comfy Rascals is going to be very challenging. I also know it's going to be great fun! The third thing I know is that it's going to be extremely difficult to sell once it's completed. But that doesn't matter. I'm in love with OuLiPo and what price can be put on that?