A few comments for people who might be interested in the process of writing novels–or maybe even want to write your own:
First novels (like I’m really an authority on this) can be very personal. Mine was, anyway. I had certain things I wanted to share that grew out of my own experiences. Not that Adventures of a Wannabe Hippie is an autobiography. But in a way it contains more of me than my two later novels. I sent an early draft to a friend of 35 years, whose first comment was that all the characters sounded like me. Uh-oh. A few drafts later she said, “I don’t know how you did it, but the characters don’t sound like you any more.” So that was a big challenge on that book–creating characters that stood on their own and were definitely NOT me.
You might think that a more personal book would be easy to write, but it wasn’t. Witness the fact that I wrote the earliest version 15 years before I finally published the book. When I revisited the earlier versions as I was deciding to actually do something with them, I realized a couple of things. First of all, they weren’t that good. Secondly, I had never actually written about half of the chapters I had been carrying around in my head for years. So that was my first task.
I wasn’t even sure, at the beginning, that Adventures would be a book–originally I thought of it as a screenplay. It would make a great movie, but I know absolutely nothing about writing screenplays. So I decided to make it a novel. Not that I’m schooled in writing novels, but at least I’ve read quite a few.
That was another obstacle I had to overcome: my reverence for schooling. I’ve studied a lot of different topics, but once I finish a degree or certificate I rarely do anything with it. A friend suggested–strongly–that I should take a course in novel-writing. I realized I had a choice: I could take a course in novel-writing, or I could write a novel.
I chose to write a novel.
And once I had sent one off to the publisher, I had an idea for a second. And then for a third. These two had a life of their own from the beginning. The characters were unique and vivid, the settings also, the plots compelling. They are not sequels or a series except in some esoteric way. They had a lot to say about themselves. They called the shots.
In a way, the first novel was a vehicle for getting all my personal interests out of the way, to make way for the second and third, which were more universal and in a way better. Is this typical of a series of novels? I don’t know. That’s just how it worked for me.
What would a fourth novel be like? That’s kind of an academic question at the moment, as I don’t have the leisure time to write one. But at least, if and when I do, I can be confident that it will have a life of its own from the start. You only write your first novel once!