My Novel: It's Just Sort Of Sitting There. I'm Not Sure If It Is Breathing Or Not.

You know I told you all I was going to write a novel for national write a novel in a month month or whatever it's called.  I decided to cheat and start early since it's my first one, and I really don't have a clue what it's about or who all is in it.  It's a lot harder than I thought.  This isn't a short story--that's for damn sure.  I've written 4,300 words and nothing much has happened.  There is no plot I discovered a little late in the game.  Something must happen and I don't know what that should be.  I mean when I realize the tension factor is flat-lined, I have the phone ring or someone come to the door, but mostly it's just like my life:  a lot of writing and a lot of dialogue.  Yackety yack with her friends, her kids, her acquaintances.  Blah, blah, blah.  That's going to get very old for the reader.

I think I have no choice but to knock off somebody. I'm thinking one of her children.  It's kind of hard for me to do since the novel is loosely autobiographical.  I told my real flesh and blood daughter about my novel predicament today and asked her if I should knock off the boy or the girl in the novel.   As always, she wants to get all the attention and not let her brother get any so she said knock off the girl.  But on second thought I can't kill my own baby.   I'm just going to let something bad happen to her that will send her to the hospital with plenty of drama and high-wire tension, I hope.  My daughter, God love her, suggested alcohol poisoning because, of course, she has had enough friends who spent the rest of the party getting their stomachs pumped.  I'm going to go with it.

And when I thirst for more blood?  Meaning next time I realize that there's a hole in my novel you could drive a Hummer through where nothing is happening, I'll decide who or what to sacrifice again.  I hope it won't be one of my beautiful children again, because that is kind of creeping me out.

What does happen in novels anyway?  Some great ones were written by Jane Austen about love hungry governesses pining away for some man who never showed her enough time and attention for my money.   What was Gatsby really about anyway?  Bunch of rich kids partying and wishing they were richer?  Lolita? It was about some old coot who drives across America visiting motels with a young girl in tow. Heminway? Always guts, fighting, wars, fishing, drinking, carrying on, women who didn't act like any woman you ever met.  Same old, same old.  I could go on.

My novel with have sacrificial lambs: my own beloved childrens.  Meanwhile, I am hunting for new victims.