There are always those novels you should write. They come creeping in while you are busy writing all those novels that come fully plotted and seem to be almost preordained. They are stronger plot wise and usually have a hook that intrigued you originally and so you take those and a year later you have a book somewhat close to what you imagined. Give or take a few thousand words
But what haunts you are the novels you feel should be written. These are more around the Franzen type of books that will inform the world on the human condition and give you some sort of immortality beyond a google algorithm. These are the novels that are certainly more difficult to write because there is less of a road map and more of yourself is on the line. You are always in the novels somewhere but in the novels that you should write you are front and center because for it to be any good you have to take risks.
And those risks are that after years of toil no one will be interested in your opus on what it means to be alive in the year 2010 or beyond. This then is the fork in the road and many novelist don't take this road because it is fraught with hazards; the biggest one is that it is damn difficult and the second one being that publishers are generally not burning down your door for the novel of evocation of character or what's it all about. Whats the book about? Well its about everything, its about our time. Uh huh.
So you write the books that while are not a safe bet as there are no safe bets in fiction at least you can sum it up to an agent or editor and have them get it. And while you write these books you tell yourself that one day you will write that novel that will put it all together. One day...
www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man will be out in January
