Novel writing

When someone finds out I’ve written a novel.  Automatically they say, “What’s it about?”  Ever try explaining, what it took you two years of hard work-pain, into three concise blurb sentences.  Even scriptwriters don’t stick to their original concept and bang out a treatment in twenty-four hours.

Letting them read the novel invariably creates total indifference.  It irritates me when I hear, “The words are too big.”  Not realizing their ignorance is huge.  I suggest writing children’s stories.

Then they say, “I think I could write my life story or a novel of my experiences.”  Sure it’s possible but keep your old job as insurance.  They quickly find out it isn’t like the movies.  Author gets an idea.  Sits at his typewriter and cranks it out in a week.  Bullshit!

Finishing a novel is the first step of hundreds of miles on a mountain climb.  Rewriting, then rewriting, and rewriting is the normal drudgery; trying not to be sick eventually of reading the book.  Like running in a twenty-six-mile marathon.  Both legs inside a burlap sack adding conflict.  While uphill struggling.  Beaten down in the rain and mud.  If lucky, the author will throw out half of the book and revise it while rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and…yup…rewriting.

That’s why the majority of folks stop after the first page and throw the novel and its research, to collect yearly dust in a closet.

So many writers have told so many aspiring writers, over and over, until it became a cliché.  “Shut up.  Stop planning.  Start writing.”

I tell my friends, who are positive I’m hiding the truth from them, my secret to novel writing.  “Sit on your ass, alone, staring at a blank page or screen that contains an invisible universe, and create a world.”