Every year in November I participate in that madness known as “National Novel Writing Month.” I’ve been doing it since 2002. I have 20 novels to show for it.
Some are better than others, of course. If you want to go to my NANO page, here it is:
Every year I struggle with what I am going to write for Nano. What could possibly be worth 50,000 words to dwell upon?
Yet every year something occurs. Last year, you can see, I spent the time rewriting “The Trial of Mars” (listed on the site as “The Gods of War”). I needed to completely redo that book from word one and I did. Proud of myself for that.
Inspiration comes from all sorts of places. Politics. Life. Dogs. My lunch.
This year I had no idea last night what I would write. I had a few desultory possibilities, none of which excited me.
Then I started reading “The Fall” by Albert Camus.
Camus was a French philosopher of the existential flavor. He also won the Nobel Prize for LIterature. That was in 1957, the year after I was born. Then he died in an auto accident in 1960. Alas, I’ll never be able to ask his advice on my existential dread.
The short novel starts in a bar. The narrator is helping the unseen man at the bar order a gin, as the bartender is surly and bestial. The book flows from there where the narrator, a lawyer, tells his sordid life’s story.
Hey, I thought, this could be fun.
I began to write a short scene where my narrator welcomes an unseen gentleman to a table filled with men.
“You say you have woman troubles? My friend, the words ‘woman’ and ‘trouble’ are synonymous. Just as the words ‘man’ and ‘fool’ are synonymous. Every woman in the history of our race has known how to make a fool of a man. As the old joke goes, this is not too difficult.”
From there the narrator will tell the tale of how he took up with a waif of a girl, seemingly innocent and lost and sad. When he meets her on a bridge by the river, he notices she has a small .22 pistol in her purse.
Dangerous hijinks will proceed from there.
I had no idea I’d start writing this last night. But once I got ahold of it, it wouldn’t let me go. I’m already bursting with scenes and ideas for the book.
But no, I don’t intend on winning the Nobel Prize with it.
(Note: Every person who has put pen to paper since the beginning of the 20th Century has believed he or she would eventually win the Nobel Prize. Which made it so delicious when Bob Dylan was awarded the prize–ol’ Mister Zimmerman didn’t even expect a Grammy that year.)
Me? No such luck. When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.
But I know I’m going to have a good time writing this novel. I’ve been in such a writing funk lately, I‘m happier than a pig in its own…maybe I shouldn’t finish that thought.
Mark Bruce, Writer 