Have you heard about my novel?

Guest Blog by: That Guy You Know Who Always Talks About His Novel

Hi!

How have you been?

Happy holidays, of course.

As for me, I’ve been working the 9-5 but it’s been more like the 8-7 lately. Am I right? Of course, it just pays the bills so I can keep up on my writing. Yeah, I don’t know if anyone has told you, have you run into Sally yet, but I’ve been writing a novel. I showed Sally a little of what I’ve been working on, she didn’t really ‘get’ it, but you know Sally.

So I’ve been working on the novel, more like the novel’s been working on me. Am I right? By that, I mean that writing has made me a bit more introspective, that I’ve had to reevaluate myself in order to be able to evaluate characters. It’s not like the novel is literally working on me, some anthropomorphized book rebuilding me from the bottom up. Though that would be a good literary device. Maybe I can use that in the dream sequence in chapter 5, that would really help my protagonist deal with his ennui, you see, he’s a writer too.

The novel’s been coming along, chapter 3 is just about finished, at least I hope so! You know artists like myself, we always want to put on one more brush stroke. In chapter 3, I was really struggling to find a proper metaphor to match my protagonist’s dissatisfaction with his day job. I mean, I could have just played it literally and had him say, “I don’t like my job,” but I don’t do literally, I do literature-ally. If I just went literal, my novel wouldn’t be much better than a mere screenplay, like the people in my writer's circle are working on! We meet every Thursday at Barriques, usually their critiques are terrible but it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

But getting back to my novel, I found my perfect metaphor when I decided to have my protagonist look into a fish tank. See, he looks into the eye of one of the fish and, for a brief moment, they identify with each other. They are both trapped but should be free, one in a glass tank filled with water, the other in a glass tank filled with cubicles. I even wrote that in the margins so publishers will understand, you know how dumb suits are.

So what are your plans for the holidays? Going to visit the family?

Ooh, sorry to hear about your sister. I know what you are going through, I’m writing about how one of my secondary characters has to deal with her mother going to Alzheimer’s. No, I know that it’s a different terminal illness than what your family is dealing with but I just wanted to tell you, I’m there for you. And the topic of terminal illness just made me think of the old novel.

Speaking of the novel, I hope to spend my vacation week hammering down on chapter 1. It’s my first impression to the reader and I only get one shot at it! Originally, I was going to open with a flashback to ’96 when my protagonist briefly meets his romantic interest at a college kegger but he’s too shy to make a move, then we’d come to the present where they would meet again for the first time in 12 years. But my writer’s circle felt that I was a bit cliched so instead I’m going to flashback even further and have them run into each other on the subway at the age of 8, when my protagonist’s family is on a vacation to New York City. The hustle and bustle of Gotham through the eyes of a young Midwestern boy should give me some strong prose.

But I’m so glad I ran into you. Most of the conversations I have during the day are just with my co-workers. All they can talk about is their babies. God, you can’t believe how annoying it is to deal with people who keep bringing up the same inane topic, shoehorning it into every conversation so they can talk about their little creation. Though, it does make for a humorous interlude in chapter 4, when my protagonist is trapped on an elevator with his boss and he has to hear his boss talk about his kids.