The Novel Life

Dear Readers,

I find myself apologizing again for the lack of posts.  The past three weeks have found us on the road, across six states (all via car), with a toddler and a prayer.  Speciifc memories are blurred, but somewhere in the mix are mental snapshots of a birth, a wedding, a funeral, a book fair, a speech, and Christ’s death and resurrection (Wow, was Easter really this month?  I could have sworn it happened five or six months ago). 

And beneath it all looms THE NOVEL.  I’m in the final redraft phase, but with each edit, each subtle turn of phrase seems to morph into a turn of plot, and before you know it you’ve written 20,000 words without stopping or washing your hair and you wish you’d just obeyed the order not to feed the gremlins after midnight in the first place.

Yes loves, I’m going off the beam.  But I can explain.  (Crazy folk never lose their abilty to explain.  Ever notice that?)    

Here’s the explanation (wait for it)…writing a novel is hard.  Really, really hard.  I know that this comment seems self-evident to some, but I think lots of other people still harbor fantasies about the lives of authors.  You know, that we spend our days in oak-lines studies, observing squirrels on the limbs outside the windows, while our ballpoints spin automated brilliance, electrified with the joy of the moment.  There’s also brandy. 

Well, to paraphrase my dear friend and mentor, historical author Charles Bracelen Flood: “Writing a book is hard.  Anyone who thinks sitting down and writing is some really fun exercise probably isn’t a very good writer.” 

But I’ve come to learn that fiction writing is particularly difficult. Not because it involves invention and creation, but because each invention, each creation, has to be sustained over several hundred pages. Ever hear the adage that it’s best to tell the truth, because then you never have to remember anything? Well, writing a novel is like trying to keep two hundred lies in the air at once.

It’s mind-scrambling. The novel will keep you awake at night, trying to unravel who did what when, so that you can then apply it who is going to do what and with whom. Unless of course (woe to you), you go back and change something.

And when all these characters, all these fragments, all these subplots begin to fight for space in your brain with you real-life problems, you know it’s high time to finish the thing.

That’s where I am now. And when my calloused little fingers have spelled T-H-E E-N-D, you’ll hear more from me.

Comments