An interesting metafictional idea...

...occurred to me when reading/commenting on this entry on Mark Charan Newton's blog (he's an intriguing new author by the way, one whose writings I'll definately be paying attention to in future).

Here's what I had in mind:

It's a story about a writer. He has a manuscript. So far, so samey. However...

What if you were to include extracts from that manuscript, various drafts during the editing process (including after feedback from publishers/friends/etc) and subtly show how the changes have occurred due to events in the author's life during the novel's span, changes in his/her attitudes, and the writer's relationship with the both the characters in the story and figures in his/her life?

Slight rewritings of the same scene in various ways can produce very different meanings, and I think it might be quite good to illustrate the author's psychological and emotional states not so much through the 'real' part but through the 'fictional'. Each fills in the gaps of the other.

What if, at the end, the final story/draft is almost entirely different from the initial one, forming a kind of story arc in itself, two journeys that mirror and contrast each other, and gradually the story being written becomes the main narrative and the writer's 'real life' plot-strand the secondary one? Or maybe in the end the one that you thought was fact was actually fiction, and vice versa, or maybe both were, or neither?

I know what you may be thinking. Yes I have seen the film 'Adaptation'. I'm thinking along quite different lines though, and also as far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong though) I haven't heard of anything precisely like this in terms of literature.

I love metafiction. It's a wonderful concept, and the way it's been used over the last century or so has been one of the great successes of literary postmodernism in my opinion.

Two of my favourite metafictional works, in case you're interested, are Italo Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' and 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski. I recommend the hardcover editions of the latter. I feel like some books almost have to be read that way, a quirk I suppose, and this is one such novel. You'll see what I mean if you read it. You're in for a real treat if you do.

If you want to follow metafiction right back into the depths of history though, you'll invariably end up at the 'Thousand & One Nights'. I always seem to find myself there anyway.