Novel Notes: A Single Spark Explosion

Photo by Vitaliy Grin on Unsplash

I’m going to try hard not to divulge too much of the premiss of my novel, yet, but I want to talk a little about its inception and how it grew from a single spark into an explosion of tens of thousands of words that all came from my tiny little brain. Looking back, the transition from not writing a novel to writing a novel is fuzzy. What I do know is that the story concept came to me over a year ago and started as a “wouldn’t it be cool”—thinking in the shower kind of idea that took root and continued to fester. The story was a seed of some unknown species that I didn’t know how to grow, or if it even would grow—I have a knack for killing plants, as well as starting projects and not finishing them. Maybe there’s a correlation or some type of metaphysical relationship there?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve always wanted to write a book, but never felt I had a story compelling enough to actually write. Ask my wife and she’ll tell you that I’m an idea guy. I have tons of ideas, all the time—some are business start-ups and some are creative projects—but they 9.9 times out of 10 never amount to anything more than ideas, which is a dismal success ratio. This idea though kept clawing at the back of my skull like a dog begging for attention. I would envision the story in every context imaginable, from short film to YouTube series, graphic novel to literary fiction. The longer I considered its implications the more evident it became that it would need to be a long-form story. There was too much material to cover it in a short story, and I had no desire to write short stories. I guess it’s possible that I ballooned the story into something bigger than it needed to be, which only time will tell I guess.

The fulcrum in which the story began to tip toward becoming a real live thing was a visit with my family a few months back, and more specifically in a conversation with my dad; a conversation we’d had many times before, but one that hadn’t taken root until then. My dad has always wanted to be a writer himself, but struggled to ever get started on the journey. Like me, every time he read a good book he told himself, “I want to write like this, too.” But like so many of us, myself included, he felt like his life was too boring to write about and that he had no original ideas. Still the desire to write has stuck with him, often plaguing him more and more the older he gets, feeling like he’s running out of time. And this, the running out of time bit, was the push I needed to get me going. It finally registered that I was never going to write a book if I didn’t start writing a book. Just sitting down to start was the hardest part, and it took years to get the gumption to do it.

So this story idea finally started to germinate, and it began to solidify itself as a novel in this ambiguous mental picture I had of its existence in the physical world. At this juncture in life I decided I need a monumental project I can submit myself to over a long period of time, something to test my mettle and prove I have what it takes to actually finish a difficult project. I had no idea where to start though, so I turned to a local non-profit in Nashville called The Porch, who sponsor all sorts of writing workshops. I specifically signed up for the Novel Jumpstart workshop with Mary Adkins, a local author with several successful novels under her belt. The class didn’t start for several weeks though and I was too anxious to get started, and maybe a little nervous that the idea would slip back into the ether if I didn’t make it materialize right away. So I sat down at my computer one evening and started to write my first chapter. It started with one line that came to me, you guessed it, in the shower. Getting that line on the screen allowed it to blossom and now I’m about 30,000 words into my manuscript, just over a third of the way through my first draft.

All of this boils down to taking whatever inkling of an idea you have, and getting it down on paper or the screen. Explore and probe the idea. Let it marinate and see what happens. If the idea sticks and starts to grow, then you know you’ve got something. Just do the work of sitting down and give it more than just lip service. Just start typing. It doesn’t have to be good. That first line I came up with in the shower to get the ball rolling has been changed several times since I wrote it. I couldn’t even tell you what the original line was at this point, but it got the ball rolling. Now the idea has gained momentum and is barreling down the mountain toward becoming an actual freaking book that I will have written, and that’s a huge accomplishment for anyone, let alone myself. Sure, there’s still a ton of mountain to descend, and don’t get me started on publishing. If at the end of the day I have a finished novel that no one reads but myself, then I’ve achieved my goal. The rest is way above my pay grade.

Next time I plan to talk about having a plan, but as we all know, plans can change. If you’ve enjoyed this post I encourage you to sign up for my mailing list to get future posts sent directly to your inbox. Thanks for reading!