Novel Ideas
Since the thread seems a little slow today, let me take the opportunity to talk about novel writing from the viewpoint of someone who knows nothing about novel writing. For months I've read this thread when I could, and still have a long way to go to get caught up, and I've read numerous posts about beginnings, middles and ends. Do you start a novel by knowing the beginning and writing to the end? Start at the end and write back to the beginning? Start in the middle and write in both directions? (I made that last one up.)
So, it occurred to me that over the years I've heard several interviews with songwriters that have been asked how ideas for songs came to them and, without exception, each one shrugged, literally or figuratively and answered the literal or figurative equivalent of: "Who knows? They drop out of the sky."
I have heard them say that they have written songs based upon a snippet of conversation or an interesting play on words, or they have written music to words or words to music, or they dreamed the whole thing complete and woke up and wrote it down. What I glean from this is that there is no right way to write a song and there is no right way to write a novel. One could write a novel by starting with a premise, a theme, a story, a character, an event, a time, a place, a dream. And it could be started at the beginning, the end or any point in between.
Of course for it to be a good novel, it needs to end up containing all the elements that make a novel good. But the beginning can be from anywhere.
I'm about halfway through writing my first. I started with an ending in mind and began writing to it with the first sentence and, so far, the ending I envisioned hasn't changed. So I keep plugging along toward it. Writing doesn't come easily to me, so I feel like I'm climbing a thick braided rope in some archaic gym class. I'm almost halfway up it now and way up at the top, glinting in the shadows, I can just barely make out that the rope ends at a wonderful golden globe (or maybe a disco ball), which is my ending.
Early on I learned that it's very difficult to climb one of these ropes. I had good days and bad days: days when I made good progress, days when I struggled to stay in place, and a few of those depressing days when I slipped backwards. Then I realized that if I wrote scenes they would create knots that would serve as handholds along the length of the long, thick rope. Climbing became much easier then. Now I'm far above the floor and the height makes me nervous but I can reach up and grasp the next scene and place my feet securely on the one below and haul myself up with a little confidence.
I have an idea for my next novel and for that one I see the beginning clearly, the middle hazily and the ending not at all. If I ever get to that one, I think of me venturing out from a secure platform onto a high, quaking, slack wire with thick fog obscuring where I'm going. I'll just have to do it, though, and be confident that I'll figure out how to stay on the wire until the ending comes into view.
That's the way I see it, anyhow.