Becoming a novelist

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In Boy: Tales of Childhood, Raold Dahl observed that a person is a fool to become a writer.

By that measure,  I must be more foolish than most, for I have written, almost without interruption, from the time I landed a summer job as a reporter on a rural newspaper until my retirement as a speechwriter some 40 years later. 

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For nearly two decades, I worked as a public historian, documenting and preserving the stories of our nation's past in manuscripts and books. I then reinvented myself as a different kind of freelancer and wrote for university, college and corporate executives for many years.

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Along the way I moonlighted as a magazine reporter and editor, book reviewer, freelance food and wine critic, satirical blogger, and occasional humorist.  My mother, to her credit, never once asked me when I was going to get a real job.

Like many people, I always wanted to write a novel. Unfortunately, life -- not to mention a fair measure of sloth -- kept getting in the way. It is only now, in that all-too-brief interlude between seniority and senility, that I no longer have an excuse for failing to make the attempt. 

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Unlike non-fiction, with which I'm most familiar, fiction permits an exhilarating but hard-to-control release of imagination. When I first tried my hand at fiction, I found such freedom daunting. In my previous life, the boundaries were fixed and facts ruled. Perhaps no one was surprised that my first attempt at fiction was an epistolary novel about an improbable relationship between Canadian rebel Louis Riel and Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. History provided the fences within which my imagination ranged.

If that novice effort taught me anything, it was that scribbling outside the lines is allowed and may lead to something wholly original. Publishers apparently disagreed.

My second novel, dealing with an ordinary woman’s dark secret, flouted convention only to the extent that the story was told in multiple voices. That structure (and I do love structure) let me experiment with character, dialogue and the creation of suspense. Again, publishers withheld their enthusiasm.

My third effort, which was enjoyable but tough to pull off, was a gentle comedy about a milkman who wanted to be the next Hemingway. The jury’s still out on that one.  

As I wait for word from agents and publishers about Hemingway's fate, I am embarking on a dark drama about the eugenics movement and its tragic consequences for one man.  You can read the first chapter below. Wish me luck.

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