The Magical Mystery Tour of Writing a Novel
I assume every writer of fiction remembers that first toe-in-the-water moment when they wrote their first sentence of their first paragraph in their first novel and wondered, where’s this gonna go? Can I sustain a viable plot with convincing characters thrown together in an unpredictable mix that takes the reader into a world of make-believe that shakes up their perceptions of the world they think they live in and know? I’ve often wondered if I knew what I was in for after writing that first line of Ancestors so many years ago, would I have kept going? When I allow that question to gain any traction, since I don’t really like it, the most truthful answer is “yes and no.”
I’ll answer the “no” part first, from the perspective of having almost finished the first draft of my fifth novel, using five of the same characters, including two dogs in each. I had no idea if I could sustain a story for approximately 295 thousand words; no thought about how many re-writes (after all, in college and graduate school maybe I re-wrote some parts of papers, but not to the point of getting obsessive about it!); if a sentence said what I wanted, more or less, that was good enough. But with creative fiction, re-writing a sentence, deciding on which word fit the meaning best, how the words sound, which character’s voice, whose voice, passive, or active voice, punctuation, tense, determiners, and connectors, when it all comes crashing down into a pile of overwhelming gobbledygook grammatical soup, you’d think most fledging writers might consider another avocation. And none of this mentions the early embarrassment and shame when someone tells you the truth: “You need to start over!” Or “This doesn’t make any sense!” Or… whatever – because there is always something one needs to fix. Even when no one offers their feedback, let’s face it, we all know when we need “to fix it.” So, the mantra is re-write, re-write, re-write! Therefore, it’s no wonder that most writers answer the question about why they write with some version of the following: “I write because I can’t not write!” It’s a double-negative thing.
Therefore, it’s no wonder that most writers answer the question about why they write with some version of the following: “I write because I can’t not write!” It’s a double-negative thing.
But here’s the “yes” part of writing, especially the part that I did not realize was in my future and the part that keeps me going. In 2008 I wrote the first sentence of my first novel, Ancestors, that took me about eight more years to finish: “Moremi stood in the sand at the edge of the Pacific in the howling wind that had spread fire all day through the California hills.” At the time, here’s what I had in mind: Moremi, a Nigerian Voudou Mami Wata priestess, in an arranged marriage with her successful Nigerian American professor husband, and eight-year-old son, Ayo, had grown unhappy, depressed in her marriage and life in America, but didn’t know why. The story that unfolds explores layer by layer, the deadly secret pervading her marriage.