Actually, I didn’t either. I didn’t start out to be one–it just kind of happened, over a period of years.
There were a number of images running around in my head for a long time, begging me to do something with them. I started writing them down around 2002, more or less randomly. One of the strongest images was of an abandoned house I had seen, a wildly romantic place that fairly begged to be imagined into something. Many iterations later it made its way into Adventures of a Wannabe Hippie: “It was deserted and desolate; two stories, all brick, on a tall foundation–a perfect, solitary cube made stately by its nakedness. . . the kind of house that would have belonged to the local doctor or a prominent politician.” Eventually that house became the setting for a very important scene in my first novel.
There were other images (a farmhouse with foot-shaped holes worn in the linoleum at the kitchen sink) and sensations (a shaky dining room floor built over a root cellar). Also smells (old wood ash; milk clabbering on the counter) and sounds (chickens clucking in the hen house) and tastes (fresh-picked corn eaten standing in the field).
Around 2016 I happened to see the movie “Finding Forrester,” about a high school boy who is tutored by an accomplished writer and eventually becomes one himself. At some point I heard the protagonist say “I can do this!” and my heart leapt as I thought to myself “I can do this!” I watched the movie again recently and didn’t hear that line–but at the time I first watched it I was inspired to actually . . . write a novel. “I want to do this,” I said to myself. “Why not just do it?” And so finally after 15 years of recording fragments, I started working to make something coherent out of them.
All I had to start with was a series of vignettes. The novel was initially a vehicle for showcasing the images and feelings I had collected. Then the characters started developing themselves. That was quite interesting. The plot developed last. It was a fascinating process, in which I was sometimes more observer than creator.
So, am I a novelist? I suppose so–an accidental novelist, though. But once the process had me in its grip, it didn’t let go easily! I spent most of two years glued to my computer, turning images and feelings and sensations into words that I hope translate back into images and feelings and sensations for the reader. I have always thought of writing as a process of translation. I hope you find these novels successful translations!