Nath Jones's Blog - Posts Tagged "aspects-of-the-novel"
Christmas Eve
It's two in the morning. I'm on the couch surrounded by pictures of friends' children; a box of brownies, buckeyes, and bear claws; and what I have to imagine is a gag gift, at least in part. (Let's hope.)
Mom was here for a few days. We went through the mess of a first draft I'm blocking out for a new novel.
I had this idea that I should be focused on action, on cause and effect, on heroism, and on whatever else it is that helps a novel stand up on its own.
This whole concept of working on plot is great in theory. But to have the entire series of fits and false starts out in front of you, to hear it coming from the voice of another is to be confronted with just what a task the real writing will be.
I'm not ready.
I said to my mother, "It's hard."
She said, "It's real work."
I shut the laptop.
But as quickly as I threw some ideas down in the first place, rushed off and away from the manuscript when it became apparent that the writing would not be easy, I went back to the familiar grace of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. I read it for a while this morning at the coffee shop. I read it in the break room at work while waiting for the other employees to have our festive lunch.
It's quite bizarre to be reading something that well written in a room with place mats from the dollar store where a pad-locked chain drapes necessarily through both handles of a cabinet for band-aids and plastic forks.
It was my last time at this little dingy clinic at 48th & Ashland.
The setting in a novel matters so much, but the place where we read a book has almost no relevance. I was there in the quiet, in the good-bye, in the waiting while the girls were busy with their dental patients. Just when I would rather not deal with writing a real novel, it was impossible to deny the peace that emanates from a truly well-written book.
Mom was here for a few days. We went through the mess of a first draft I'm blocking out for a new novel.
I had this idea that I should be focused on action, on cause and effect, on heroism, and on whatever else it is that helps a novel stand up on its own.
This whole concept of working on plot is great in theory. But to have the entire series of fits and false starts out in front of you, to hear it coming from the voice of another is to be confronted with just what a task the real writing will be.
I'm not ready.
I said to my mother, "It's hard."
She said, "It's real work."
I shut the laptop.
But as quickly as I threw some ideas down in the first place, rushed off and away from the manuscript when it became apparent that the writing would not be easy, I went back to the familiar grace of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. I read it for a while this morning at the coffee shop. I read it in the break room at work while waiting for the other employees to have our festive lunch.
It's quite bizarre to be reading something that well written in a room with place mats from the dollar store where a pad-locked chain drapes necessarily through both handles of a cabinet for band-aids and plastic forks.
It was my last time at this little dingy clinic at 48th & Ashland.
The setting in a novel matters so much, but the place where we read a book has almost no relevance. I was there in the quiet, in the good-bye, in the waiting while the girls were busy with their dental patients. Just when I would rather not deal with writing a real novel, it was impossible to deny the peace that emanates from a truly well-written book.
