Starting a Novel...for the 5th Time

Lash wrote-



Come on Lash--you're underselling geezers. Getting a bit nostalgic-you know.

Geezers look harder and are more choosy and if they find something they love just as hard and hurt just as deep and think just as far and maybe further as Spitting does. At 17 he has an Aladdin's Cave full of temptations which geezers have learned how to sort through. Less tempts geezers but that doesn't mean nothing does.

I wish I was 17 again though. Why don't you take it from then.

"When I asked Nora to dance that night at the (*******) where the(*****), it was because all her friends were dancing and she was sat on her own. I suppose it was because she was considered plain."

And go from there to here in 4-500 pages with the object of amusing your readers with a geezer's look back at his life. If it gets out of hand and you are only 19 when 500 pages are done you could call it Part One of Lashed To The Mast.

The really good writers are those that, not so much concentrated on how they say it, they just have something to say. Its experience that shows through, not florid prose. If everyone wrote like Joyce, Im afraid the emergency rooms would be full of crash victimes who'd just finished trying to muddle through some of Joyces mental masturbation.
Nobody seems to write straightfroward declarative sentences anymore. Also, only a few are great dialogue writers.

Ive seen and read so much "first novel" efforts that turn out to be one trick ponies. An example is M Knight Shamalyan. His works have all been derivative of his very first screenplay and , IMHO , hes realizing taht being a good writer/.director takes effort.

fm wrote-



Had I got as far as "victims" I would have stopped. I wouldn't have tried to lay my disapprovel, had I had such,which I don't,on the reader.The simple scientific fact that-



would suffice. I would allow my readers to draw their own conclusions.

Not that I ever would say anything like that mind you.

I think if everybody wrote like Joyce the conversation at the bar would be a distinct improvement on the shite I have to listen to most nights. Not every night-just most.

Do you not think I write "straightforward declaritive sentences" then fm?

"Nobody" seems a bit extreme. It even includes yersen mi worship.

You can nearly garuantee that a first novel will not be worth the paper it's wriiten on before too long. It's like looking for a gold seam in Broadway.
Better looking in them thar hills which have been there a long time. More chance.

Gotta disagree with you there, farmerman. A good story is one thing. The way you put it on paper is another. It's like a lousy joketeller killing a good joke.

Re: Starting a Novel...for the 5th Time

Well, I over hauled my story and it's gone in a completely new direction.

I think maybe now I can pick it back up.

Wish me luck. Again.

Good luck again. I can't wait to read it. I will likely only live another forty or fifty years, so please get to work!