December 4, 2023
Why I Will Likely Never Write Another Novel
Note: Ain’t life funny? Not a month later, I simply needed to start writing another novel! Read all about this new novel, The Storytelling Cat.
Whenever someone says “always”, “never”, or “everyone”, be very suspicious. I am too of my own utterance. Never write another novel? Never say never again! However, at this point in time, and with enough experience behind me, I do feel that way: I will likely never write another novel in the foreseeable future.
Why I feel that way might be a useful thought direction to you as well, especially if you’re a writer, but also if you’re simply someone interested in what art and expression mean in today’s world. More still, what forms creative writing takes and why I feel a novel is currently not among my favorite such forms.
I Will “Never” Write Another Novel: Concepts vs Seeds
A novel, in order to be cohesive and ultimately meaningful as art, must be aware of its conceptual foundations. In simpler terms, a novel should not merely be a linear progression from point A to point B, but an organic whole that delivers affective impact.
This requires a lot of work, if the idea is to make it properly.
Of course most people don’t bother, they just sort of making shit up as they go – even famous writers are repeat offenders, such as Haruki Murakami – which destroys any sort of conceptual consistency.
I don’t want to do that.
However, nowadays I’m also more and more interested in seeds rather than concepts: little chunks of experiencing, tangents and traces of things forlorn and forgotten. In other words, I’m interested in connections and ideas, rather than their sustained, in-depth exploration.
Art Formats and Scope
My most recent literary work is A Summer Evening in Another World. It’s a flash-fiction collection. Before it, I wrote Tell Me, Mariner, which was a short-story collection. Perhaps you see a pattern? It’s very likely not by chance that this occurred right after The Perfect Gray, my most solid literary-fiction novel in terms of conceptual cohesion.
At this point, I think I’ll never write another novel simply because flash fiction (and maybe short stories) are better art formats for expressing what I want to express: ideas and seeds, rather than concepts and themes.
Remember: A short story is not simply a shorter narrative! They have different dynamics and function in largely incompatible frameworks.
But there is more: What about art other than writing?
I Will “Never” Write Another Novel: Music, Painting, Drawing
As the images above reveal, these days I’ve been painting quite a lot. Of course I’ve been also drawing quite a lot, venting my frustration with the world through Punning Walrus. And music, as past blog posts reveal, has also been something I’ve been doing a lot.
What all these forms of art have in common is that – the way I approach them – they are idea/seed-based rather than concept-based, like novels.
In other words: With music, painting, and drawing (as with short stories and, especially, flash fiction) I can take the morsel of an idea and play with it, holding its hand for a very brief period of time and then letting it go. Yes, there are people painting a single portrait or composing a single song for years, but that’s not how I approach these forms of art.
To me, a song, a painting, or a drawing (or a flash fiction story) is a matter of a single day, if not a single afternoon. A Punning Walrus cartoon like the one you see above takes me as little as 15 minutes.
I immerse myself in the worlds I transiently create, throw the idea seed around and then continue with the next one.
Novels Beyond Concepts
My friend Igor, when I told him about these thoughts, aptly pointed out that my definition of a novel is somewhat Anglo-centric. It’s true, there are many ways of approaching a novel, not necessarily requiring in-depth explorations or strong conceptual foundations.
The thing is, however, that’s not how I want to write a novel. Perhaps this, too, will one day change. Perhaps I will then say “never say never again” and I will write another novel, one wildly experimental. Maybe I will even decide I want to work with concepts again, opting for the in-depth, sustained exploration I’m currently not so interested in.
Until then, I will “never” write another novel. But hey, maybe I’ll change my mind tomorrow.
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Perhaps the short story then. Maupassant made a name in some very brief stories.
Being brief requires great skill, I’ve realized!
As long as I still believe in the power of stories, I will be writing.
The power to live other experiences, to try out other lives, to build empathy from having ‘been there’ – even simply (pretty hard some times) to be entertained for a while – is why I read, and why I continue writing. I believe I can show, among other things, what it is like to live as a person with ME/CFS, to have it control your choices in life, to fight back.
For this purpose, I value a very high degree of accuracy in the verifiable parts of my stories, so that a reader might believe me in the imaginary parts – because they fit so well.
My impulse is the kind that led to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Black Beauty – people were quite sure ‘it is not that bad’ and were forced to admit it was even worse than they could imagine.
We’ll see if I persuade many others.
Perhaps this will come across as pessimistic – maybe the fault lies with me: I believe in the power of words, but “stories” is a trickier subject.
It’s easy to woo people with words, and it’s easy to woo them with the stories they expect to experience. But once you start diverge from expectations, you begin to lose their attention.
In plain terms: I often worry (not even “worry”; more like, “wonder whether”) the era of art is over.
I am pinning my hopes to, ” But hey, maybe I’ll change my mind tomorrow.”
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be” 😉
🥲🥲🥲
Though not literally “tomorrow”, it turned out to be almost as close 😀
Here’s what happened, not a month after I wrote this post!
It always annoys me when my mum says “at last” when she thinks she’s reached a turning point in the way she thinks. Then it annoys me more when I notice I’ve thought “at last…”
Nice paintings! I like the bit where the sea meets the sky, I’m convinced although it would be nice to be able to zoom in. I studied painting for a while but jumped ship and continued the course in sculpture because I thought it was easier. It wasn’t! Have a great weekend. Rik
Many thanks for your comment!
This is beautiful. You’ve found yourself new media, and you’re exploring them. To open oneself up to new experiences, to express oneself in new ways. This is life being lived.
Thanks! And perhaps this is particularly true for trying something I always thought I was bad at, like painting/drawing.