I Hate My Novel

I’ve spent the last several days hating my novel. I hated the plot, or lack there of. I hated the heroine. I hated that it took place in space and I hated that it sucked.

Then I went to Panera Bread this morning to have breakfast with my daughter-in-law (really the daughter-of-my-heart) who is also a writer to commiserate about my plight. We got our coffee and bagels and settled into a corner table next to the window. On the other end of the blanket that bordered one side of the tables was sitting an African American male with a kind looking face some where between the father and grandfather age.

Both Tracy and I have lived in far more integrated neighborhoods then the ones we now live in and it is rare to see any ethnic diversity in our daily rounds so it made us smile to see him sitting there. And being that both Tracy and I will talk to anything that breathes and some things that do not—it was not long before we stuck up a conversation with him.

York Reynolds was born in Georgia in 1942. He had a loving childhood even if his father was undemonstrative and both of his parents were present in his young life. He’s living now in Hartford with his granddaughter, his wife having passed away. He likes to get out in the morning and go for a drive and find a place to have breakfast and sit and enjoy watching the people and the nature he writes about.

York is a poet and his filled three notebooks with his poems that he intends to leave for his children so that they will know who he is and how he feels about things—in a way he never got to know his father. I asked him if he liked Mary Oliver or Billy Collins (Poet Laureate of the US in 2001-2003) and he sadly shook his head. No, not them he said, Shelly and Keats were his wordsmiths. Shakespeare and the Elizabethans sang to his soul.

York was aware that his was the only black face in the restaurant and there had been a time that his mother, after the beginning of the civil rights movement when integration was new, was not comfortable sitting in a MacDonald’s with white people. Times they are a changing, he told her.

A few years ago he was back in Georgia visiting his mother; he was sitting on her porch swing looking across the street to the all black elementary school that he had gone to. When the bell rang for recess and the front door burst open and blond curly headed girl with a face as white as snow came running out followed by her more richly “colored” friends. York’s smile went from ear to ear, yes, he said, the times are changing.

We are so free with the word hate. I hate my novel, I hate my hair, I hate my neighbor. York knew something about that word first hand in a way I can never know. It brought me up short. Here was a man who loved words and in our almost three hour conversation he didn’t use the word once. And only if I can live up to that can I hope to help – the times they are a changing.

It's that time again! NaNo 2007

It’s that time of year again and I’m engaged in the month long word marathon called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It’s crazy, it’s time consuming and it’s fun! So much fun that I’m doing it again!

I tried in 2005 and didn’t make the 50,000 word bar but in 2006, I parked my inner editor and any idea of producing a finished product in the bottom draw of my dresser and taped it shut. Without the distraction of perfectionism I accomplished my goal and produced a story worthy of editing.

This year’s heroine is a tough wise-cracking space pilot whose side kick is a bio-computer that is fond of quoting dime store detective novels and doing Humphrey Bogart impersonations. When she finds her boss shot and her room on the space station blown up she figures it’s a good time to head out of town.

She escapes religious conversion when she inadvertently wanders into the no-fly zone of an Amway Pyramid Prayer Colony by claiming to be in a hurry to help her ailing grandmother. While the Praytons are considering what to do Mya (her name for now) pops the clutch on her warp drive and reappears on the dark side of the quadrants most dangerous space outpost Hell’s Run.

We find her in a Retro-MacDonald’s (the metallic robots at the counters are a tip off since no one has seen a metallic robot since 2020, they are all humanoid looking now) trying to find out what the hell is going on and why half the galaxy seems to be looking for her.

And that’s all in the first 4500 words.

So keep checking back and I’ll try to keep you updated on the story. Those of you that leave comments and kudos will get points redeemable in Black Mary’s Space Bar for Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.