Love+trunk blog

Trunk blog: noun. A previously published article that I feel I have to share. I keep a few of these tucked away (trunked) and rip them out whenever the mood strikes.

Feeling literary?

I have often considered writing a novel, something that will at least get some attention from some people – a rather ambitious idea, and if you are anything like me, also a rather rubbish idea. Why?

Well frankly, it is possibly one of the most difficult things to do. In fact, a novel is a difficult beast to tame without getting famous for your efforts. And besides that obvious set-back, I have a sneaking suspicion that most people at some stage consider trying their hand at writing. Everyone has a story to tell and, it would seem, a desire to tell it.

What that means is that anyone considering the task of writing a novel is in the difficult position of competing with every novel that has been written, is being written and is likely to be written in the future. And it is pretty hard to be significant in literature, when it has already been claimed by the greatest minds on earth.

That is the playing field, now for the game. A novel is an extended, generally fictional, prose narrative. This implies that a novel is the creation of an organism in itself. It is a world, with geographical specifications, in which characters (people, animals, aliens, deities, robots, spirits, various forms of machinery and sometimes talking household goods) exist (unless it is post modern, in which case it could comprise a series of articles from Homeless Talk and still win a Booker award). These characters should be in some manner unique, to enable the reader to tell them apart. The novel should have a sequence of events, or plot conveyed coherently through the vehicle of narrative, thereby creating the story (once again, barring post modernism).

Once all of this is achieved, the novel should be in some way appealing to some people. Close friends and family members are usually willing to buy the work of fiction, and speak highly of it. Literary critics will also invest in a copy and will speak of it, but with varying degrees of benefit to the author.

With all of the above in mind, I have in the past (several times) set myself to the task of writing a novel. Several fundamental problems always crop up, much like a recurring nightmare: my inner narrator (in a hazardously annoying voice) would use words such as teetering, precipice, moribund, wanderlust and other examples of deeply contrived expressions that we expect in magazine short stories.

At some point during this saga, it will occur to me that I am trying to do what everyone tries to do at some point…and what has been done remarkably by other, mostly smarter, people.

This being said, it is not an impossible task, but it remains one that demands a lot of time and dedication. I have resigned myself to the fact that I may never be a novelist; I simply do not have the patience. I do, however, encourage anyone with a desire to write to do so. Whether it works out or not, there is nothing quite like taking some time out to feel literary.