Answering the question: “Why did you write a novel?”

I can’t speak for other authors, but this question comes up with (to me) alarming frequency and always gives me a moment of pause. Writing has always been a part of my life whether it is poetry, grocery lists, or correspondence. I have a file cabinet with several folders marked simply “writing” where I have stored pieces of paper, journals, legal pads and diskettes filled with my ideas. To me, the answer is obvious - “why wouldn’t I write a novel?”

My current novel (second one written, first to be published) was actually one of those scraps of paper in a file cabinet. During my pregnancy with my second child I had a series of very strange dreams and captured the impressions and concepts on paper only to toss them in the “writing” file for me to flesh out some day. And there the notes sat until a year later when my sister-in-law and I were having a sort of snark-fest about following one’s dreams versus the reality of needing a steady income and benefits. The particulars are not that interesting, and hardly flattering to either of us, but the end result was her tossing down the gauntlet for me to do something about my writing rather than dream about it. To further toss kerosene on the flames of our snit, she send me information about a writing contest on Gather.com and essentially dared me to (1) write the novel, and (2) enter it.

I am a Taurus on the cusp of Aries with Leo overhead at the moment of my birth. If you know anything about astrology, you can imagine what my response was. The end result was the first draft of “A Love Out of Time.” The story had some technical issues, POV shifts that gave a number of readers whiplash, way too much back-story, and not nearly enough dialogue but for a first novel written in 30 days it finished in the top third of the first round. (At the bottom of the top third to be precise, but still a respectable finish in my humble opinion given the speed under which it was written.)

The hard work began after the first round of the contest was over. It was at this point that “A Love Out of Time” became something more than a “so there” to my sister-in-law. The feedback I received made me realize that I might have something worth working on and so began a year of critical review and edits. I edited my novel because I found a voice within that would not be silenced. The characters became as familiar to me as my family. I wrote because I could not imagine going back to the place where I jotted down my thoughts and filed them away for a “some day” that might never happen.

Since “A Love Out of Time” was born, I have gone back to my file cabinet and taken out a number of my old ideas to see what else is speaking to me. I found a legal thriller that I wrote under a different name that I am knocking the dust off of. Sandwiched between some really awful poetry, I found the outline and first scene of what is going to be the second novel in a series I am tentatively calling “The Time Walkers” with “A Love Out of Time” being the first book in the series.

Now when people ask, “Why did you write a novel?” I say, because it is what I do.