Last week I went to lunch with an old friend, and we were joking about the novel I could write, coming up with ridiculous plots for it. I’ve forgotten them all now, but rest assured they were brilliant. I asked him if he thought he had a book inside him, and he said yes, in fact he’d written one as a teenager. “I wonder if I have it somewhere,” he said. “I hope so, I expect it’s dreadful.” We agreed that it was likely to be entertainingly awful, especially as it was a fantasy novel.
Once, a friend said my life would make a good book. “I mean, I’m not saying it would be great literature or anything, but it would be a good read,” she said, somewhat insultingly. “So, what you’re saying is, it would be a trashy novel minus all the sex,” I said. Other friends have discussed how fun it would be to write a screenplay together.
I know we’re not the first people to think we have a novel inside us. Far too many people think that, and far too many publishers agree with them, in my humble op. The nice thing is, I/we get to let our urge to write come out in fits and starts, through blogs. No need for plot, no need for a certain number of pages by a certain deadline. No need for discipline or well-constructed sentences, even. I like blogging, and I like reading others’ blogs. I do wonder whether all the writing practice is setting someone up to write the great British/American novel, or if it just substitutes pictures of kids, hiking anecdotes, and meandering streams-of-consciousness for what could be a new Hemingway or Austen.
I don’t personally think I’ve got the modern “Mansfield Park” within me. I’m not sure I even have “Bridget Jones Diary 3.” If I were to write a book, I’d want it to be a light and fluffy travelogue and/or romance. What would you write?
Monday 27 July 2009
Moby Dick or Shopaholic?
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7 comments:
A screenplay. A eugenic murder romp, with romantic subplots. The murderers would be the protagonists, out to purge the world's gene pool of idiots. (No, it would not be genocidal: beer bongers, wife beaters, and people who refuse to turn left into their designated lane would be killed, irrespective of race, creed, socioeconomic status, or gender.) Then of course one of the murderer-heroes will fall for one of these idiots and there we will have the Conflict: how will he/she reconcile high principles that could lift all mankind with the awful urge to let this person live and reproduce??
As I cannot trouble myself to be concise, the screenplay would be very wordy. The word "very" would appear a lot, as would the term "a lot."
You definitely have a witty romantic novel in you. Maybe you could incorporate your abilities in romantic and travel writing into a story about an Emma Woodhouse-like character visiting Italy for the summer and trying to find a suitable match for the resistant Abbess. You'd be wise to take up the pen name of Jane Austen or somehow incorporate an Austen reference into the title, because nothing but Austen seems to be inspiring anyone these days. Come to think of it, maybe that's the next important novel that needs to be written -- the romantic masterpiece that proves that there is life after Jane Austen, wonderful though she is.
I believe you can write that novel. Go forth and show the world that we Mormons can produce better romance than Twilight.
Your novel would have lots of dry humor and snarky comments about the foibles of life and those who seem to have more of them than others. You'd be like a more functional Bridget.
I don't know what my book would be. I'd start with the intention of writing an ode to my garden and domestic life, but would probably reveal too much of my own dysfunction and neuroses, like an alcoholic's memoir without the booze. And it would have to be nonfiction because I can't write convincing dialogue to save my life.
Yeah... blogging is definitely taking precious writing away from that novel of mine.
Actually, I can't decide even what genre my novel would be. That's why my blog is part sci-fi thriller, part romance novel, part murder mystery, and part child's picture book. You never know what you're going to get. That's what my novel will be. Something like "As I lay dying." Stream of conscious. Tour de force. My mother is a fish.
I can't wait to start. Pity it's already been done.
Thanks for asking.
great post! and i love marie's second comment.
i think my book would be a self help, life lessons learned, or some other sort of preachy book. i tend to "lecture" a bit - at least my brothers say so.
I already have a chapter of a book written. The book is called "No Sex in Salt Lake City." Ha ha. It's a book about being an LDS over-31 single girl in SLC and all of our dating adventures. I just need a male co-author to write the other half... :-)
I hope you're off writing that romantic novel. No other excuses will be accepted.
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