This is just something that I wrote very quickly, as it's surely obvious, for no apparent reason other than I have been trying to start a novel, or at least something lengthy and "serious", numerous times and each time failed miserably. It's kind of a joke. Enjoy. Or not.

A CONVERSATION WITH AN AUTHOR

“I want to write a novel.”
“Is that so? Well, that’s certainly commendable. Have you written anything before?”
“Not really, no.”
“Then how do you know you could write a novel?”
“I feel like I could. I have all these ideas.”
“Oh, yeah? Which ones, for example?”
“Well, I’m not too sure. Just images.”
“I see. That may be a good start for a short story, but do you really feel you could take on writing a whole novel? After all, a typical novel should at least be in the neighborhood of fifty thousand words. Do you have that many words in you to describe these images you’re talking about?”
“Fifty thousand sounds like a lot, sure, but how hard can it be?”
“It depends. I have been a professional writer for over a quarter of a century and have to my credit only a handful of novels, eight I think. Yes. And at times it was not very simple indeed.”
“Why was that?”
“There were various reasons for that. Writer’s block, I guess. And other things.”
“I see. Well, I’m pretty motivated.”
“That’s a good start. What are your influences?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, what are some of the authors that you like?”
“Hm...”
“Melville? Faulkner? Joyce? Nabokov? Updike?”
“Who?”
“What are your favorite books?”
“Well, I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school.”
“It’s part of the curriculum, isn’t it?”
“I guess. Most kids hated it, I remember, but I really enjoyed it. There was lots of swearing.”
“Yes. Was that the first novel you had ever read?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I may have read other stuff when I was younger.”
“So reading Salinger made you want to write your own novel?”
“Oh no, that was years ago. It just sort of came to me one day that I wanted to do this. I think it could turn out okay. Maybe they’ll even make a movie out of it, who knows...”
“An adaptation? Well, what is your novel about?”
“It’s hard to say. I have many different ideas that I’m not sure could actually be combined into a single novel. I’m thinking ahead here. Not a series, no. That’s so overdone. I mean like an oeuvre, you know?”
“Sure. A complete works.”
“Right. I’m imagining these sleek hardcover spines lined up on the shelves of people with my name running vertically down. Or, if the novel should be pretty thick, horizontally. You said you wrote eight novels?”
“And a couple of collections of short stories, yes.”
“So ten books?”
“Give or take.”
“And you’ve been a published author for thirty years?”
“Thereabouts, yes.”
“So that’s like a book every three years, right?”
“Well, on average, yes, but once I had two books out within the same calendar year. There was a long novel that was followed by my first collection.”
“So you published two books in a row and then what?”
“I was writing a very difficult new novel and it took me several years to get it right. I didn’t publish anything else in the meantime.”
“I see. Well, I have tons of ideas floating around my head. Should be enough for ten books, if I portion them out right.”
“Let me hear some of them, your ideas. Do you mind?”
“Well, it would be unprofessional of me to share potential New York Times bestseller-quality ideas with a published author. Conflict of interest. Or something.”
“I understand, of course.”
“Well, I can tell you one.”
“Great.”
“This would take place in the future, in the year 2012 or so. It would be about this crazy totalitarian government’s surveillance system and a guy working for the government and realizing how bad it is and trying to destroy it or escape from it.”
“That sounds a little like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Okay, here’s another. This is a lot better, I think. It’s set during a war. There’s all this carnage. A soldier gets captured, but all of a sudden he begins to involuntarily travel though time. Adventures ensue.”
“Hmm, this one sounds sort of like Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut.”
“It does?”
“Indeed.”
“That’s weird. Well, here’s definitely something original and new. I just came up with this idea a couple of days ago. There is an accident at a secret facility and a deadly disease is released into the atmosphere. Almost everybody on the planet dies, except just a few people, who try to survive and fight against another band of people who are against them.”
“You know, it’s been said that there really aren’t any new ideas anymore. Everything is derivative of everything else that came before it. I bet this conversation we’re having now, there has been a version of it once or twice. I’m sure if you wanted to write a novel, and really set your mind to it, you could. Best of luck.”
“Thanks. I was also thinking about this—”
“It was a pleasure to talk.”



August 14, 2009