At least once a year since I've retired, I've had the notion that I want to write a novel. The trouble is, I get about 20 pages into it and then my ideas splatter here and there or I lose interest. Right now I'm piddling about with two ideas--one is a crime drama about a woman who isn't sure if her suitor is a murderer or not, and the other is about a hopeless gal going off to college to seek a marriage license. Here's how it starts:
Chapter One--In the Beginning...August, 1969
Have you ever had that ominous feeling that you are about to be dropped, dumped, and dragged to the ditch by the love of your life? I've been down this road hazard many times, the first being the summer of 1969. The rocky highway was Kansas I-47 en route to Pittsfield State College with my high school sweetheart Chip Mansfield. We were entering our freshman year at Pitt, and I was anxious about losing him to a bevy of bombshell coeds, of which I, sadly, was not among. Chip was a handsome football player. I was an average looking nobody. How we'd hooked up in the first place was, in part, due to the fact that the pickings were minimal in our small hometown. Through attrition, I'd stepped into Chip's life our senior year of high school. Halfway during our drive to Pittsfield that fateful August day, here it came:
"Uh, Barb, there's something I need to talk to you about," he started. The tone of his voice led me to believe he was not about to propose marriage. His draft number was 350, so the fear of being shipped off to Vietnam wasn't likely on his mind, either. "Mom has told me that she thinks we ought to see other people now that we're going off to college."
"She what??!!" Surely I had misunderstood him. Why, I was a certified virgin. I worshipped the ground he walked on. How could any mother think I wasn't Grade A marriage material, other than the fact that his family was upper crust and my mom was raising seven kids alone, with the help of coupons and Green Stamps?
.....And it goes on and on and on about how the narrator gets the heave-ho and embarks on her new quest to meet guys and find the love of her life at college. Okay, so it's an old formula, but I figure I have lots of material from my own life and my girlfriends to go about 15 or 20 chapters. I just need to focus and get it done. If I can do one chapter a week, I can have the whole thing done in, say, 20 years????? It's never too late.
5 comments:
That will be a great book! Just keep thinking of the funny or sad things she goes through and fill in the rest.
Enjoy and I would love to read it when you are done. :)
PLEASE keep going!!! I was already drawn in & disappointed you just gave us this little teaser!!
I'll send you Chapter One's rough draft.
Are you watching Drop Dead Diva on TV? I swear Janet E. wrote the screen play. Is pretty funny. DIL and I watched the pilot and got hooked. I think it is a series on Lifetime. I'm probably not as encouraging about the novel though, tee hee. Waht about non fiction?
You can write a novel. Or publish a book of blogs. Yours are fantastic! (And they're already written!)
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