This thing on? · Feb 9, 10:15 PM by Scott McNulty
I bet no one is reading this anymore, which is why I am actually posting something here.
I was talking to Marisa the other day about what she wants to do with her life and it got me thinking about what I want to do with mine (crazy, huh?). When I started this blog on October 26, 2005 things were very different in my life:
- I had a blog crush on Marisa, but I didn’t tell her that (though we’ll be getting married in September, so that worked out well)
- I had never written a book, but I wanted to (now I have written a bestselling book about blogging, though it isn’t a novel)
- I was working in IT, but wishing I could blog for a living (now I’m the Chief Blogger at a giant company)
When you look at that list I really have nothing to complain about, and yet like most creative people (even marginally talented creative people like myself) I am not happy with my work. What I really want to be is a novelist.
I realize that wanting to be a novelist is pretty cliche and that I haven’t actually written any creative fiction in a long, long time but that does not staunch the desire. I realized this all over that fateful dinner this Saturday when I said to Marisa, “Sure, I’ve written a book but I haven’t written a novel yet. I just don’t have the time!” As soon as I said that I didn’t have the time I knew it for the lie that it is. I do have the time, I’m just too lazy or too scared to actually write a damned novel.
Luckily, written my first technical book did two things for me:
- It helped me prove to myself that I am capable of writing long form pieces (up until that point I hadn’t written anything longer than 25 pages, and that was my undergrad thesis about stagecraft in 17th century England).
- It proved, without the shadow of doubt, that outlining is a writer’s best friend.
Peachpit Press, the publisher of my book, wanted an outline of the book before they agreed to pay me to write it. In many ways writing the outline was the hardest part of the whole process. I had to visualize the whole book before I had written a single word. Once I had it all on paper (well, on computer) I was pretty certain that Cliff, my editor, would write back to me and politely decline. Incredibly they liked it (and it seems that lots of other people liked the final product) and we were off to the races.
This all leads me to the true purpose of this post: I want to write my first novel. I’m well aware that it will mostly likely be awful, but I need to get the first novel out of my system before the second novel can be written. And who knows, my first novel might actually end up being pretty good (one can hope).
Therefore, I’m reviving this blog (and enjoying using Textpattern once again!) as I am attempting to write a novel again, for the first time.
Wish me luck!
