the mediocre american novel
An evening of American Masters on PBS has me wondering what my Novel would be about. First Margaret Mitchell and now Nelle Harper Lee; one thing I know is that it’s not going to be about a war. Or racism. Truthfully, I’m not sure that I have a fictional story to tell. As I get older, I’m beginning to think there may be a Sedaris-style book of essays somewhere in me, but probably not even that. Writing one long thing is really hard. It’s really hard and I don’t ever want to hate anything I’ve created as much as I would hate that Novel. I think I heard somewhere that Johnny Depp never watches his movies and I completely understand. Looking back on what I’ve written, I hate the parts that took me forever and I hate looking back over what took me forever and discovering that what I wrote quickly is actually what sucks and I should just start the whole thing over. Or, I’ll go back and set out to continue along what I’d mentally outlined before and realize that it’s just awful, it doesn’t make sense and I’m pretty sure it was a Lifetime movie. Either way, even if I did manage to finish the damn thing, I would view it as a published scrapbook of related thoughts that my brain produced in a cloud of misdirected anguish and self-loathing.
julie warshaw 