So You Think You Can Write?

Last month I took a week off work to travel with my mom down to Naples, FL and work on my new project. We traveled Sunday to visit my brother and sister-in-law on Sanibel and they took us to lunch on Captiva. Sitting with my older brother about to have lunch at The Green Flash, beyond all conversation of the devastation and reconstruction after the hurricane and the food and drink that the man on the deck below had ordered, he asked, “Did you study literature in school? Have you taken any writing courses?” What I heard was more like, “What makes you think you can write a novel?” I responded to his actual questions, “No. Neither. I was better in the Math department. However, I’m reading and learning every day.” I continued to comment that this is the most difficult task I’ve ever pursued. Writing every move, every flinch, every emotion a person has, the size, shape and color of the places, not to mention each encounter and how all the pieces of life connect and affect and move other pieces is ridiculously difficult. I’m not fooling myself that I have within me the “Great American Novel”. I’m just trying to get through my first “sloppy copy” (a phrase Elizabeth shared with us at our Catholic Writer’s meeting and one I’m clinging to).

We all have stories to tell and many of the people I come into contact with through our business, St. Mary’s Bookstore, make the comment that they wish they had time to write a book. My response is always the same, “Do it. Take the time.” And may I add, “plenty of it.” That’s what this venture requires; plenty of time to develop the talent, to share your treasure!

I don’t know many first timers who can sit in front of a computer and type out a novel in six months. We are learning by reading every great or not-so-great novel and every how-to-write manual, subscribing to every magazine and substack on writing, and practicing our techniques through blogs and newsletters. Many of us join book groups to discuss good writing and storytelling along with writing groups to read aloud and have our writing critiqued and we attend conferences to get a glimpse of what the world of writing entails out there, beyond our local groups. Writing a novel takes time and energy to find our voice, to organize and to make big decisions for the people pinched between our front and back covers. Writing a novel changes the way we read, the way we people watch and the way we process life because it causes us to continually ask how our characters would act and react to what is happening before us. It can consume us to the point that we may stop in conversation to write something down, not always so we don’t forget the thought but so we can clear our minds to live in our own present.

Other writers may not feel this way at all but this is me; learning, working every day, reading every day, hoping that one day I can have the screen filled, the type set and the ideas complete. I’m simply moving forward so that one day all my desire and all my talk is done and I have finished my first novel. Because after all, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.