On Writing a Novel

                I had this great idea for a novel.  The idea sort of simmered in my brain while I was on vacation, and then I spend an entire three-hour plane ride jotting down the details and developing the characters and situations I wanted to incorporate.  I felt quite smug upon landing, because I had finally written an outline for a book of FICTION rather than a thinly veiled autobiographical novel like the others in which I’d changed the names and added a few spicy details.

                And then I woke up the next morning.

                I started going over the plot in my head, and it sounded more like bad Nicholas Sparks than something really good.  As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even though the story was fiction, it was really about me.  Again. 

                Let me run it by you:  Woman travels to the Los Angeles coast for vacation (I literally just got back yesterday from L.A.).  She immediately walks the one block from her rental property to the beach (which I did) and is overwhelmed by the immense beauty of the ocean (ditto).  In her hurry to get to the beach, she has just dumped her suitcase, purse, and jacket by the rental property’s door, so she has no ID in her possession (yep).  When she gets to the strand, she is preoccupied by the ocean, and thus steps out onto the strand without looking and gets nailed by a biker (something which ALMOST happened several times last week – runners, bikers, roller-bladers – they’re EVERYWHERE – turns out those exercise freaks are actually dangerous).  She slams her head into the concrete barrier that separates the strand from the sand and blacks out.  (Obviously, this part didn’t happen, but I’ll tell it anyway.)  When she comes to, there’s a crowd around her trying to “help” (read:  “ogle”).  There’s blood running down her face from a huge gash on the forehead, and she is very disoriented (I also am often disoriented, but not from hitting my head on a concrete structure). 

                Ensuing temporary amnesia.  (Really?  But it worked so WELL in my head!)  A guy who lives on the strand comes out to help, and they forge a bond when he invites her to stay, because she has nowhere to go and no ID.  (Wishful thinking on my part.  Did I mention that those two people are roughly my age?  And that the guy looks like a younger Richard Gere in my head?)

                When she doesn’t answer her husband’s phone calls, he’s pissed because he thinks that she is blowing him off, because they aren’t on great terms anyway.  (I answered at least HALF the phone calls from mine when I was gone, so I’m not a complete bitch.)  Then when he realizes she is actually missing, he’s a little upset that he has to deal with it.  (Do you see where I’m going with this?  It seemed fictional, but then I keep putting my own interpersonal junk in it.)

                Cut out a ton of the story-line here, and in the end she leaves her prepackaged shitty life and moves on to something better and different.  Final kiss on the strand where she met him in the first place.  (All daydreaming which I did while sitting on or near the strand and literally wishing these things would happen to me.) 

                Is this where fiction comes from?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  Maybe I could make it a very short story and just have her die in the first chapter when the bike hits her.  Put everyone out of their romantic misery before it even begins.  Give her a new afterlife on some alien Mormon planet.  Or, better yet, just cut to black.  End scene.  The Epilogue could be an apology for why I can’t concentrate long enough to write a novel or learn how to properly write a screenplay. 

                I think I’ll skip the fabulous writing career and go straight to the celebratory glass bottle of champagne.  Bottom’s up!