wrecks

A big, fat old manuscript sits on my dining room table. It’s the copyedited version of the novel that is coming out this June. I have to read myself one more time! This when I’m trying to begin to discern any strands of the misty cobweb that is the beginning of a novel, the gossamer nothing that is beginning, the story that isn’t there, the idea that can’t quite be grasped. What a fool I am, I always think when I’m beginning a novel (and when I’m deep in it) to think I can do this. I guess it’s because once the story starts to live, it’s hard to imagine it any other way. But until it breaths on its own, I have to have such trust, such faith, such sheer bullheadedness. It was easier when I was younger, the bullheadedness, I mean. The faith and trust are the work of my grey hairs. As English novelist Iris Murdock once said, “Every novel is the wreck of a perfect idea.”

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