Lou W. Stanek - So You Want to Write a Novel

Of course you want to write a novel. Stories only happen to people who can tell them . Hold that thought. Use it as your mantra. Stick with me. You can write your story.

But you have a job, a business, kids, and/or commitments? Most novelists do. I know a Wall Streeter who claims to have written his novel on the subway. A mother in Baltimore wrote hers in the front seat of her Toyota while her kids took ballet lessons, played baseball, became good Scouts. All the members in my writers workshop a lawyer, an actress, an accountant, an iron worker, a bartender, a classicist, a mother of four, a secretary, a psychologist, a librarian, a grip, a salesman have novels in progress. Think of it this way: if you write one page a day, in a year you will have a novel . Well work on a schedule later.

If youre serious about writing a novel, or any type of fiction, you should zip out to buy a notebook before you read any further. A writer never leaves home without one. Ideas pop up at the weirdest times and places but often dont last any longer than soap bubbles. Emily Dickinson composed exquisite poetry on brown paper bags and the backs of receipts, but she created a dreadful mess for the executors of her estate.

The first time I offered a workshop called So You Want to Write a Novel, a student with eyes the size of shooter marbles looked at me suspiciously and said, I think youve been reading my mind. The others nodded in agreement. If Ive been reading yours, buy that notebook.

Sooner or later, no matter what trade or profession youre in, the urge strikes to cash in your chips and try a different game. Plumbers want to play the tuba, bond traders want to tap-dance, lawyers want to go to sea, accountants want to be sportscasters, mothers want to run IBM, and everyone wants to write a novel . This book is an oxymoron, a practical fantasy. It comes with a brown paper wrapper, to protect your anonymity or your other job while you find out if its possible and if you have the right stuff.

Taxi drivers from New York to Tokyo meet intriguing people. Doctors hear bizarre tales. Business people deal with manipulators. Lawyers cases take over their lives. Women fall in love with their bosses or each other. Families fight, people get divorced, kids get out of hand. We all have regrets. I challenge a writer to find an airplane seatmate who doesnt have a story he thinks deserves to be told. Most of us want to write a novel to show our sense of the injustice, absurdity, or beauty in the human condition. Material for that story constantly swirls around you.

Nora Ephrons mother, the writer Phoebe Ephron, always told her: no matter what happens, its copy. Legend has it that on her deathbed she told her daughter to take notes. Nora learned well. When Carl Bernstein had an affair while she was pregnant with their second child, she called gossip columnist Liz Smith and then wrote Heartburn .

Phoebe Ephron was right. The first step for a novice is to begin to think, see, hear, read like a writer . If your life has begun to seem as dull as a day-old doughnut, heres a way to add a spark. Writers are too busy sleuthing for material to be bored. They notice tics, ties, the shapes of noses, when the copy machine moans, the refrigerator groans. The practice has its dangers. Searching for words to describe how a kiss feels while its happening can be distracting. Your boss might resent your taking notes while he is in a rage.

People say the funniest things at the sock counter at Saks, do the weirdest things in elevators, airplanes, grocery lines, staff meetings. Make a note. Dont be amazed if the man who sat next to you on the bus this morning the lardy one in the slick suit that looked as if it had been skinned off a fish works his way into your story wearing that ghastly suit.

Begetting a character to make you proud is serious business. Find one you can live with for a long time. Shell join you in the shower, read your mail. Writing a novel is like method acting: when youve found your protagonist, you never come out of character .

Occupying someone elses skin costs less than plastic surgery and does give you a lift. You read the news from her perspective. She judges the salsa, the Woody Allen movie. She has an opinion about your ex, your mother, the phone call from your boss. Heres another chance to put some zing into your life. Its an exhilarating and spooky experience. You become the person you are creating. Flaubert hadnt had a sex change when he said, I am Emma Bovary.

What do you need to know about this character? EVERYTHING his soft spots, mean streak, mood swings, politics, tastes. Would he wear the damnedest gold watch youve ever seen or a Timex? Subscribe to The Economist, The Nation, GQ , or Vanity Fair? Clip shaving-cream coupons or fly first class even if he had to pay the difference himself? Would she wear perfume to bed alone, burp the baby wearing her good black suit, do whatever dastardly thing it takes to close the deal? How can you find out? By doing the series of exercises in this book, making up your own, living in her skin, digging into your own experience with caution.

Fact might sometimes be stranger than fiction, and your life might be jazzier than Queen Elizabeths daughters-in-laws or Milkens at the predators ball, but even the most beguiling personal experiences dont always make good plots. If you worked your way from office boy to president by being a nice guy or met the perfect mate twenty years ago on a romantic cruise, its interesting, but its not a novel. It lacks conflict. Conflict is the trouble a character encounters on his way to a happy ending. If Macbeth had won his crown legitimately, Lady Macbeth wouldnt have been a sleepwalker, and we would never have heard of either of them.