Why Don't I write a Novel

Why Don’t I Write a Novel?

My friends and family keep asking me why I have never written a novel, although I claim to be a writer. They wonder why I seem to be perfectly content just writing short stories. Guy, whom I have known for decades now, and I consider to be a good friend asked that question straight out one night when we were in the Toby Jug and under the influence of alcohol. He had just read a short story I had written earlier that day.He said that he had enjoyed it.But I now wonder how much he meant that.

A person I knew, who was not so much of a friend, once put that question in a very nasty way. “You need to write a novel to be considered a writer. Writing short stories is like drawing pictures with crayons, rather than painting portraits.” As much as I resented his callous remark, it did start me thinking about considering to write a novel.

My wife Laura’s response to my comments about having written no novels was more neutral generally.She is careful with my feelings.She asked me “Why don’t you give it a go? You’ve got nothing to lose. Your short stories are good, so any novels you write should be good as well”. I felt that was a supportive challenge. “Okay, I said, I will see if I can do it.”

My next thought was regarding the kind of situation in which I would write such a monster. I knew that I did not have to write it ‘all at once’. I did that rarely enough in writing short stories Sometimes I think that just labelling them as short is slightly insulting. Why not just call them ‘fast stories?’ They don’t call novels ‘long stories’. If they did perhaps people might think that reading them would take too much time.

Should the condition or situation of novel writing be different? I don’t usually finish a short story in one go. Usually they are written in pieces, with changes sometimes made when I get a new look at what I had written. The all important conclusion often comes in a flash later.But how many flashes would I have to wait for if I chose to write a novel?

I Give a Novel a Try

Then I wonder whether watching an old movie, not the shallow ones that come with a ‘seen it before’ feeling of contemporary movies. I decide to watch “Gone With the Wind” on the movie channel. It came out in 1939, with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. My wife Laura sits in a separate chair rather than the couch upon we usually watch movies, and she promises not to say a word.She has long been great help in my writing short stories.

Maybe I might be able to create loose parallels that are significantly distinctive.

I watch and enjoy the film as I have done before, and write down the names Scarlett O’Hara and Rhette Butler to see if I can create parallels, that are somehow distinctive enough to be called mine. However, I just cannot escape every aspect of the movie I have just seen. There would not be a drop of originality in what I would write. I cannot escape the characters, the plots and the actual words that they say. I have failed yet again.

A Novel Weekend

I am desperate now. I have been trying for weeks with no bold stride leading to a novel.So, Laura suggests that I spend a weekend in the motel just outside of town. I had thought of something like that a week or so before, but I did not want to abandon my wife in that way just to do my writing. Before I could tell her that thought, she hands me one of our wedding pictures, she tells me that with that picture near me when I am writing she would be spiritually with me even if she wasn’t with me physically. I could not turn that down.

I brought both pen and paper and my computer with me to the motel. The first morning I woke up extra early. Fortunately the place had loads of coffee that I could make, several pots of it. What I found was that I could start a story flying into my mind, but when I thought of making it go farther than any other story I had ever written, my mind crashes like an airplane in a thunderstorm, which I thought might be the part of a novel, with the two main characters somehow surviving.

Stories began and stories crashed. That was my the daytime of Saturday. I tried sitting on two chairs (one at a time) that were inside my room and one that was outside, beside the front door. I even stood outside for a while, then I sat in the backseat of my car. All locations led me to the same brick wall of blocked writing, speaking metaphorically.

Returning to Short Stories

That evening, I went to dinner at a local diner. It was the oldest such place in town and it catered to the oldest supper seekers as well, both with food and the music that was piped in. The music was just right for me. I was raised on the music my mother loved. I did not take my computer with me. It would be too bulky and would draw unwanted attention. I was fading (another metaphor) on novel idea, at least for this day. Still, I brought my pen and pad of paper – just in case (not something I completely believed).

Then an old song began playing that went straight into my heart and mind. It was “Tell Laura I love Her, by Ray Peterson, my mother’s favourite song in the early 1960s. It was one reason why I asked my wife Laura to dance with me at a school dance back in grade 10. We were in the same class. And she has been suggesting that I write short stories, and give up on novels.

Then I got an idea for a story – not a novel but a short story, about a writer who wanted to extend his writing to novels, but found out that short stories were his talent, and he should stick with what was given to him by the writing gods (another metaphor), and he should listen to his wife. My Laura liked that idea when I told her about it.