They Just Keep Telling Me . .

Everyone who knows me well enough to read this blog knows that I am a writer. I've authored more than 140 books to date. I love the job and it still gives me a thrill to look my name up on Amazon and see the listings. However, with very few exceptions, everything I write is non fiction. I know the process upside down, inside out and topsy turvy by now.

The problem is that the people I love most in my life are the ones that keep suggesting, encouraging, reminding, insisting, demanding and NAGGING me to write a novel. They want me to write a fictional novel because, they all swear in legion, I would be SO GOOD at it. Hmmmmm.

Writing a fictional novel when you typically only write nonfiction is like asking a professional basketball player to take up polo or a flamenco dancer to learn square dancing. Sure, the very BASIC process is the same (hit a ball, dance a step, write the words, etc.) but it calls on much different ideas, pathways, processes, skills and talent. I'm not sure (although damn, they all seem to be!) that I have or can get those skills.

Sure, I love the idea of having a novel on the shelf with my name on it. I'd like to see it on someone's bedroom table with a receipt stuck in it to make their place. I"d like to see someone walk by at the library with a copy in their hands. I'd like to read a review about it that talks about character development, plot line and that fantastic twist at the end but I am also incredibly intimidated by the thought of attempting it. No plots drift through my head after I watch a movie. No ideas pop up as I am reading someone else's novel. I am not struck with a lightbulb over the top of my head when purusing the bookstore aisles. Would that it were so.

So despite the fact that my husband, daughter, best friend and others keep asking when I am going to write a novel (or as some less tactful people put it, a REAL book like the 140 ones I've done aren't REAL), I will keep putting on my someday list and hope that inspiration will find me while I am still young enough to pay attention to it.