The signs of my novel meme
February 13, 2008Dorothy tagged me and thereby saved me from the painful necessity of creativity. Draft posts are backing up, I promise you! It’s just that they are only half-complete and the rest of the words simply will not come. In the meantime, signs of a novel by me:
- It’ll be short.
- There will be very little dialogue. Sorry, can’t be bothered to type all that punctuation.
- It will not be subtitled ‘A Novel’.
- The blurb will have some relevance to the contents, because I will write it.
- It will be wry, witty, ironic and detached in tone.
- The heroine will be called Livia, will wear great shoes and will drink champagne other than Veuve Cliquot or Moet.
- It will be contemporary because I’m too lazy to do historical research.
- It will sink without trace.
- It will have literary pretensions.
- It will never happen.
Given that my entire writing career consists of this blog and one bad poem from many years ago, I think the world is safe from any more extended writing.
What do you mean by #10? You’ve already told us nine things too many. We want Livia!
Alas, Mandarine, I do not have the drive, the need to write, the imagination or the talent for a novel. I’d like to read that book too, though, so if anyone else would like to play with Livia, they should feel free.
Damn, I was hopeful for a great read until #10. Perhaps the list in itself could be considered your novel? You do say it will be short and there is much I could extrapolate from here.
You make me laugh.
ZM, you have given me a great idea. I will reduce famous works of fiction to bullet point lists; these will be ideally suited to mobile delivery for the allegedly illiterate ‘youth of today’. I will then augment each list with an informative but humorous introduction and the entire collection will almost certainly be picked up by a major publishing house and produced as a small but slightly over-priced hardback for the Christmas gift book market.
It is a beautiful plan that I feel sure could actually work! Go for it.
I just might have to name one of the characters in something I write Livia. But do you mind if she drinks mint juleps instead of champagne?
I love this book! #5 and #6 together sound great.
LOL! I know just what you mean about the punctuation for speech. I keep thinking to myself if I have to write it, now where should that damn comma go? I’m all for stream-of-consciousness on that basis.
Emily – my feeling is that Livia would enjoy mint juleps very much.
Dorothy W – Personally, I’m pinning my hopes for the fruition of this novel on Emily
Litlove – I once tutored a guy who wrote short stories but struggled with punctuation; in particular, he wanted to learn about the punctuation around dialogue, so for a brief time I was very well versed in it. I think that is where my distaste stems from.