How Not To Write a Novel
I’ll be in bed if you need me
The desire to write a novel tends to hit me before I have any solid ideas about how to get started. I want to write a novel about grief. I want it to touch on spirituality and faith in ways that make sense to me, an atheist who wants to believe (must believe) that our consciousness lives on once we die. I want to write it this year or last year or next year.
This must be a book that incorporates magic, but it must also be a tale of self-discovery. The ending will include a reunion in some other realm than ours — a tear jerker, where a grieving mother gets a final goodbye with her dead child.
But this is not plot or character or story. It’s just a jumble of thoughts in my head that are going nowhere.
I know this novel will be about me, but I’m not sure what that means yet. I know that grief will be the central spark that runs through the narrative just as it runs through my life. Grief must drive the plot and characters and story of this not-book.
The book in my head always starts with the desire to tell a story. That’s also where it always ends. The concept for my not-book hovers half-formed in my mind, its edges unrealized, as I wonder how the hell to bring the shadow of this story to life. I know there’s something there, but I can’t seem to reach it.
