At least this guy hasn’t given up . . .
I am getting seriously involved with another novel, trying to get a second one written after years of stops and starts, mostly stops. I stared long and hard at my last novel before giving up on it, and I have to say I feel fully justified. The plot was as tangled as last year’s Christmas lights, complete with knotted wires and broken bulbs. I made some last, palsied attempts to make the thing glow again, but I could tell it was dead.
It’s not hard to tell if your novel is dead.
TWELVE WAYS TO TELL IF YOUR NOVEL IS DEAD
12. Your novel is dead if you’ve written three hundred pages, but you wrote the last one in 2009.
11. Your novel is dead if you’ve forgotten your characters’ names.
10. Your novel is dead if you keep promising to get back to it.
9. Your novel is dead if, when you do get back to it, you mess around with the font.
8. Your novel is dead if you’ve just bought another book on how to write a novel.
7. Your novel is dead if you’re still trying to figure out how Hemingway did it.
6. Your novel is dead if you’re browsing online for just the right chair.
5. Your novel is dead if you’ve just opened a Twitter account.
4. Your novel is dead if you’ve begun thinking that, well, at least you’ve got your health.
3. Your novel is dead if when you’re watching The Godfather, Part II and Michael Corleone says, “Fredo, you’re dead to me now,” you think immediately of your novel.
2. Your novel is dead if the novel you haven’t started yet sounds more interesting.
1. Your novel is dead if just before Thanksgiving you swore to get back to it right after New Years. And exactly what are you doing right now?
Join the club!
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
Do you think my novel is dead if the last time I did anything with it, I wrote a whole new chapter in draft then the next day it had disappeared, never to be found again? Is it the technophobe in me who didn’t try to find the work in the depths of my computing machine or the resigned soul who accepted that the time was not right. This happened 18 months ago and still I have written nothing more. Que sera……
Simon, search in our archives for my February 3, 2010 post on the single best indispensable rule for writers. Next to a broken heart, a lost file is the worst non-fatal feeling you can get that doesn’t involve an actual death.
I only wish to help…….
Amigo, interesting post. ET believes you have a great novel within you. A really great one. So I have two pieces of advice for you (sorry).
First, try this http://touch.slate.com/slate/#!/entry/can-we-really-unplug,4f03323306f18e5f4057d10c
Second, think Peter Mayle and the great triangle of your life (DC, Harpers Ferry, and Italia).
Now, get busy.
That’s telling him, El Tigre Armstrong!
You could of course try the great author’s mentoring service courtesy of ‘MOI’, firm and gentle, gets results.
Simon, between you and Ruth Deborah I think I’m in for some tough love. Good!
As your dear father would not say: Right on!
I’d say try The Artists Way by Julia Cameron but it takes twelve weeks, so that time might be better spent in writing. However, Julia says, if you write a page a day, in a year you have a 365 page novel all ready for editing. Today is the start of your novel, happy writing!
I agree, Simon, that the time is almost always better spent writing. Everything else is stretching and knuckle-cracking.
I totally disagree with you about ‘Bowhunter’ being dead, Kaze, and wish you’d stop saying it. Good news: you publicly admitted you are seriously involved in another novel … soooooooo … now move that shapely behind of yours and stop moaning about novels being dead. Oy vey, good thing I keep lookin’ at you, kiddo, if not you’d p*** me off (just a wee bit … Ha! P*** off and wee bit, how cute, RDR)
No, no, no, dear Ruth Deborah, “Bowhunter” is dead only in that it’s out of print. A really dead novel is the one that has fizzled out without ever being finished. With all the good wishes from folks like you and Tigre, I’m going to finish this next one.
I know, me luv’, that Bowhunter isn’t dead, but it being out of print is scandalous and goes straight against my agnostic-good-Jewish-girl religion, because it is a damn good book. Okay, okay, I’ll give you enough time to write the new novel and then start bugging you about Bowhunter. Fair deal?
And even my name isn’t Robanne: I do remember Carl Reiner.
AND: thank you for the super photographs of the Lovely Monroe. G-d, she was so beautiful, wasn’t she?
…thinking you have a future in comedy writing. That was pretty funny. Most likely, we all see ourselves in some, if not many of your 12 reasons.
Thanks, Robanne! I see myself as Carl Reiner. Do you remember Carl Reiner?
Thank goodness for a little google induced memory jog. Yes, I do remember Carl Reiner – but I am more of the Rob Reiner generation.
Reiner’s “Princess Bride”: Priceless.
Almost amusing post, but don’t agree with any of it. Any book is dead if you don’t believe in the story.
I know someone else, a currently resting and beautiful Madre, who I love very much, whose work (two books indeed) is sublime, and will I am sure have a glorious second coming when the time is right.
Amen to that. And many times over.
Ah, darn…mine’s totally dead! I’ve known this for some time. I have three semi-done versions of it tangled together, with no idea where I was headed with any of them. Time to move on.
Moving on is fine, Mateeka. You’ll do better with the next three!
This applies to non-fiction too. RLC