Here is my plan:

Quit my job
Spend nights on the couch working on a transcript
With a laptop, of course
That I don't have
Intermittently have children
Stay at home with said children
Because, HEY, I'm a novelist
And I can
Finish said transcript
And subsequently have it published
Make millions
Because the novel would be genius
Of course
Repeat
(Except the "have children" part)

Ahhhhh. Doesn't that sound WONDERFUL? Too bad the only part of that list that will likely transpire is the part about not having a laptop, and the part about having children.

But I totally want to write a novel. How cool would that be? Maybe I feel that way because I find reading novels more fun than breathing, but still. What an accomplishment it would be. I took a creative writing class in college, and loved it. We wrote poetry, short stories. Shared them with our classmates. In high school I even wrote a four-chapter story throughout the course of my English class. I thought it was awesome. I'm also a total nerd.

A friend recently said she has taken a story she wrote when she was young, and began a revising process to turn it into something better. After all, she was, like, 11 when she wrote it. I thought, "Wow. How cool. I wrote a story when I was 11." And then she told me her story had over 100 pages. ONE-HUNDRED PAGES.

My story? When I was 11? Was about an antique ceramic cat that killed its owner. And it had about, oh, six pages. And I thought I was cool. And even put it in a binder and designed a book cover. I'm doomed.

Another friend recently finished writing her novel. She actually wrote one. And she's told me about character development, plot twists, the birth of a character that "wasn't originally planned. The character just happened." And I thought, "Oh my God, this is so over my head." I don't think I have the mental capacity to develop a plot, nonetheless several, that twist and coexist and develop. It would take me 73 years.

And if I do my calculations right, that would make me almost 98 before my story was finished, and who wants to read a novel written by a 98-year-old? I'm just going to go right ahead and say, "Not me."

krittabug