This is going to be the first blog in a series of blogs that will chronicle my attempt at writing a novel. If you haven't already, please check out Alli's blogs on "Building your Writing Toolkit" as this endeavor of mine is somewhat inspired by her series.
What I hope to accomplish with this series is two things:
First, I hope to inspire you, my fellow contributors, to start your own writing project. Something that you will keep coming back to a body of words and shaping and molding it.
Second, I hope by writing about my novel experience, that I will be able to dedicate myself to finishing this novel.
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When I was trying to figure out where to begin, I found myself actually figuring out the ending. I was in class and was listening to my professor lecture about Milton's Paradise Lost when the Heavenly Muse herself came down and penetrated my consciousness with a brilliant idea. I had the idea of three men, who grow up together, and die relatively soon after each other. What is significant about the ending is that each man chooses to be buried in a specific way that reflects the metaphysical makeup of that particular character. So now that I had the ending, I needed to figure out how I was going to get them to that point. This seemed like an overwhelming task. I mean, seriously, where was I going to begin. But before I could begin I realized that I had to know who I was writing about and how I was going to write about them.
This is when I performed what I call a literary "meet and greet". I wrote the names of each character and then started to list details about him. I would describe personality traits, people in my own life that I would mold the character after, and little back stories or small events that would come into play later. For the three main characters I chose to mold one of them after myself, two of my friends, and my dad. I am a firm believer that you have to write what you know; granted that you don't have to know everything about something in order to write about it, but it does make coming up with words and realistic reactions easier. I then went on to describe two minor characters, two sons of two of the main characters.
Now that I had some idea of who I was going to be playing with in my figurative world, I now had to decide how I was going to construct the narrative of the story. For this I drew inspiration from two sources. First, Alli's latest blog about crafting your narrative and second from the last book I read And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. The book is written by both Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. In it each author writes from a different narrative perspective and the book alternates chapters between each narrator. So for the purpose of my novel, I will be writing in first person and alternating between each of my three main protagonists as well as a few others.
What has made me feel like I can accomplish writing a novel after mainly writing poetry is that I am going to be writing the chapters as if they were stand alone compartments. Each chapter will be a different perspective and will allow me to give my readers the opportunity to be one-up on characters at points and also one-down at other times. By breaking the novel into pieces it is more manageable and will allow me to write various different narrative sequences with out having to worry about telling the story from A-Z. Having the narrative broken up into pieces will also allow me to move chapters around and interchange them so that I can pick and choose when to reveal important plot information.
So with that said, I am going to be leaving you now. Next time I hope to report back with a few more lines about the progress of this novel idea.
Also if you have any questions about writing your own novel, or want to share your experience please leave a comment. The more of us pushing each other to finish, the better the end product will be.
As Always
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
Bermuda,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see you're writing a novel. It's a strange transition going from poetry to novel, but it's a fun and interesting one.
I actually started off writing short fiction before I wrote poetry, and, after a while of writing short fiction, I started a novel. Two actually.
I hate calling them novels, though, as they're both technically novellas at the moment. One is at 20,000 words and the other is at 18,000 words. If you're going to seriously considering writing a novel, though, I have some advice -- the advice is not all from me, I should add.
When you sit down to write, just write. Write what you need to -- try to get as much of it out in one sitting as you can. Do this, then rinse, wash, repeat. Getting into a cycle when writing a novel is a good thing. I went about a month writing every night, and I made pretty decent progress. Don't worry about the editing; the editing can come later, and, in my opinion, should come later. John Steinbeck has a lot to say about this process of getting shit out as quickly as you can, and I'm sure a lot of the greats -- Bradbury and Hemingway are the two who immediately come to mind -- feel the same way. So, yeah, don't become your own worst enemy when it comes to revision.
Also, try your best to make it a routine without making it an obligation. To some extent, the writing process needs to be something that seems, for lack of a better word, organic, but putting yourself on a schedule can do wonders to the way you approach your writing.
I particularly like that you're breaking your narrative up into pieces. This is a good thing, especially in regards to pumping a lot out at one time. If you can, try to finish chapters in no more than two days.
Keep me updated on your progress. I'm curious to find out how others write, and It's always interesting talking with other people who are starting off novels.
Best,
J