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


Hello Bella Dea

In the world of words, there are almost as many diversities in the creating of them as there are readers. Among all the advice you may find, buy, read or hear, the best advice concerning any talent or art is: Put yourself in it. Make it yours. If you do not like to outline, which is something I do not feel conformed to doing, either, that is your style, method and choice.

If you are using a computer, you have a great tool that many famous writers never experienced. "File" your ideas, notes, and characters. If you are like me and cannot remember where you put things, save-as in more than one place.

My first book is only one of poetry and short stories and is not very good, but I proved to myself I could DO IT. It is approximately 360 pages. The stories were written as tests to discover where I felt most comfortable in writing, experimenting with many styles and methods. When beginning another routine short story just as I was about to be late for work, I wrote myself a note at the bottom of the page, "This is much more than a short story. It is a book. Have the patience to see it." I did. My first novel is about 350 pages and half way through its completion, it became the first of a trilogy or more.

Fame and fortune do not impress me as success markers in life, but "why" is very moving. Ask yourself, "Why do I want to write?"

One author of reputation, Stephen King, had an interesting statement about his writing. It was in the Reader's Digest....can't recall the issue.

Stephen King

"The best work I have ever done has a feeling of having been excavated. I do not feel like a novelist as much as an archeologist who is digging things up and looking at the carvings on them. Sometimes you get a little pot out of the ground, and that's a short story. Sometimes you get a bigger pot, which is a novella. Sometimes you get a building, which is like a novel. When I feel I'm ?'creating,' I'm usually doing bad work."


Stephen King does not write poetry that I know about, and I have taken his quote one step further. When I am creating, I do not like my writing as well and stop writing on my novels. When I feel overwhelmingly creative, I write another poem or another unusually complex short story. Poetry is where I can hide my innermost feelings and fears. Poetry allows the reader to do the excavating.

If you truly have a burning desire to write, never give it up.

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!