A NOVELIST? NO, NOT I

Where did I ever get the idea that I could actually write a book? Blogging religiously for three years does not mean I am able to spin a tale worth reading. Writing one half-finished short story a year does not make me a writer. Reading endless how-to-write books I can get my hands on does nothing to help me weave plots and create characters.

What is it that makes me do this stupid thing called one month noveling, while fully realising that I am not capable to invent even one name for my characters? Madness, sheer madness. I was mad: I thought I could concoct a whole new world with my computer, one I could run to whenever the world I lived in turned upside down. I thought doing what I loved would help me through life’s most boring days. And I thought I would be happier at the end of the month because I had another 50000 words inside my computer’s guts. Madness: I have surely turned mad.

Where did I ever get the idea that I could actually write a book?
Whenever I tried to sit down and draw a plot of my story, immediately I felt so insufficient and began gasping wildly for air. The plot that I finally churned out was so weak that I winced at the sight of it. I am sure that if a person in her right mind were unfortunate enough to come across this novel one day, she would hunt me down and do everything in her power to get a legal decree to banish me from nearing a computer again.

Plot? Did I say a plot? But my, there isn’t even one. I hid behind the excuse of making a sort of short-stories compilation, to conceal the painful fact that I cannot make a plot that stretches from the beginning to the end of the novel. I miserably tried to weave a line between those short stories, attempting to connect them and give them a better-defined significance. But the simple truth remains: if a thing is insignificant in the first place, then no matter how hard you try to blow it up, make it up, cover it up, it will stay insignificant.

And, and: I may crowd this blog with insignificant posts to my heart’s content, but a novel needs something more than that. It needs a plot, a significant reason of being. It needs characters who open their mouths and talk to the readers. It needs a story to tell: something to laugh at, or cry with, or get turned on by, or be scared of. The last thing it needs is a fussy author who tends to repeat herself every couple of sentences. Like everything else in life, it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The last thing it needs is a fussy author who tends to repeat herself every couple of sentences.

Where did I ever get the idea that I could actually write a book? What has possessed me all these years, making me think that the voices I hear inside my head whenever I am alone (while washing the car/contemplating my toes/fantasising about making love to D) belong to a novel worth writing? What has pushed me into actually sitting in front of the computer, crafting a dense 50,000-word nonsense out of thin air? How can you tell when you have gone preposterously mad?

Sitting at the computer now, inches away from that wretched compilation I will dare not call a novel even in the maddest day nearing the end of my life, I try to sort out my dreams like a woman with a good head on her shoulder. Just like the dreams of joining the research facility of the Indonesian Air Force has to go, it seems, the dream of becoming a novelist will have to hurl itself to Timbuctoo. I have too clear a logic, and too sceptical a mind, to allow myself such extravagant dreams.

But I won’t lie to you: once in awhile I still picture myself in that blue uniform. And be a woman with good head on her shoulder I might not: for here I am right now with my cup of coffee, typing away happily, concocting a new world I could run into when life gets mean, spinning insignificant sentences out of thin air, feeling exuberant and perfectly at home – pretending that I am writing a novel worth reading.