Novels I Have Written
Mar. 14th, 2012 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFor my own amusement as much as anything: a list of the novels I’ve written to date, and the age at which I completed them. This list doesn’t include the novels I started but didn’t finish, which includes some real corkers which I hope to finish someday. Possibly I should make a list of Novels That I Plan to Write at Some Point?
The Running-from-the-Nazis Novel, age 9
I read Number the Stars the summer after second grade and followed this up by reading every children’s novel the library possessed about the Holocaust. But then I exhausted the supply! Woe! Clearly a sign that I ought to write my own.
I suspect the result is way too short to be called a novel - I haven’t read it in years; I’m not even certain that a copy still exists - but I thought it was a novel.
Besides, it had certain qualities that are tragically absent in some of my later efforts - most noticeably, a plot - so it deserves some respect.
The Most Terrible Fantasy Novel Ever, age 14
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and religion and religious culture clashes and maybe theocracy!
Everyone else: And there will be...plot, and...characters, right?
Jin: Oh heck no.
I didn’t deliberately set out to write an inert plotless mass peopled by cardboard cutouts, but that’s how it turned out. And it didn’t even have much empire or theocracy or cultural clashing, either! A wash all around. I’m pretty sure there is not a copy of this one anywhere, and it’s probably just as well.
It doesn’t even have telepathic companion animals. I was obsessed with telepathic companion animals! Why didn’t I throw any in?
Julia, age 16
After the tragic implosion of my fantasy novel, I decided that maybe I should try something a little less ambitious. A teenage novel! Using the characters from this story! Because you can’t go wrong with the most misanthropic and arrogant heroine ever!
Actually, I really like Julia. I like Julia so much that every few months I kick around the idea of someday maybe revising this novel, manifold though its flaws are, because I find Julia and her snarky snarktasticness so entertaining.
Unfortunately, I also saddled the book with basketball and boy drama and a few other things that, even at the time, I found soporifically boring. (I guess I thought you couldn’t write a teen novel without rampant boring boy drama. The teen novel police would, like, shoot me if I tried it.)
And Julia’s magical powers, while entertaining in the short story, don’t fit in the novel. I wasn’t really interested in them - no one gets turned into a frog here - so they just kind of sit there, acting as a signpost that Julia is special and cluttering up the narrative.
So I’m not sure excavating Julia from all the dreck I threw in around her would be worth the trouble.
Terrible Fantasy Novel, Mark II, age 20
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and slavery!
Everyone else: ...you have written this before...?
Jin: Oh no, the last one didn’t have slavery.
Everyone else: Okay then. And you will be adding a plot and characters as well, right?
Jin: What do you think I am? Competent or something?
I was on LJ when I wrote this; my entries about it are under the tag “lotus.” That was the heroine’s name: Lotus Helianth. Her people are into flowers, okay? And I was only 17 when I came up with the name so you can’t blame me for it.
Oh man, this was terrible. The prose is (probably) better than my first terrible fantasy novel (but I don’t have a copy of that first book to prove it, so maybe not...) but otherwise aging six years and writing another novel in between appear to have had zero effect on my writing ability.
Note to the wise: If you want to write about culture clash, it helps to have well-developed cultures.
The Running-from-the-Nazis Novel, age 9
I read Number the Stars the summer after second grade and followed this up by reading every children’s novel the library possessed about the Holocaust. But then I exhausted the supply! Woe! Clearly a sign that I ought to write my own.
I suspect the result is way too short to be called a novel - I haven’t read it in years; I’m not even certain that a copy still exists - but I thought it was a novel.
Besides, it had certain qualities that are tragically absent in some of my later efforts - most noticeably, a plot - so it deserves some respect.
The Most Terrible Fantasy Novel Ever, age 14
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and religion and religious culture clashes and maybe theocracy!
Everyone else: And there will be...plot, and...characters, right?
Jin: Oh heck no.
I didn’t deliberately set out to write an inert plotless mass peopled by cardboard cutouts, but that’s how it turned out. And it didn’t even have much empire or theocracy or cultural clashing, either! A wash all around. I’m pretty sure there is not a copy of this one anywhere, and it’s probably just as well.
It doesn’t even have telepathic companion animals. I was obsessed with telepathic companion animals! Why didn’t I throw any in?
Julia, age 16
After the tragic implosion of my fantasy novel, I decided that maybe I should try something a little less ambitious. A teenage novel! Using the characters from this story! Because you can’t go wrong with the most misanthropic and arrogant heroine ever!
Actually, I really like Julia. I like Julia so much that every few months I kick around the idea of someday maybe revising this novel, manifold though its flaws are, because I find Julia and her snarky snarktasticness so entertaining.
Unfortunately, I also saddled the book with basketball and boy drama and a few other things that, even at the time, I found soporifically boring. (I guess I thought you couldn’t write a teen novel without rampant boring boy drama. The teen novel police would, like, shoot me if I tried it.)
And Julia’s magical powers, while entertaining in the short story, don’t fit in the novel. I wasn’t really interested in them - no one gets turned into a frog here - so they just kind of sit there, acting as a signpost that Julia is special and cluttering up the narrative.
So I’m not sure excavating Julia from all the dreck I threw in around her would be worth the trouble.
Terrible Fantasy Novel, Mark II, age 20
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and slavery!
Everyone else: ...you have written this before...?
Jin: Oh no, the last one didn’t have slavery.
Everyone else: Okay then. And you will be adding a plot and characters as well, right?
Jin: What do you think I am? Competent or something?
I was on LJ when I wrote this; my entries about it are under the tag “lotus.” That was the heroine’s name: Lotus Helianth. Her people are into flowers, okay? And I was only 17 when I came up with the name so you can’t blame me for it.
Oh man, this was terrible. The prose is (probably) better than my first terrible fantasy novel (but I don’t have a copy of that first book to prove it, so maybe not...) but otherwise aging six years and writing another novel in between appear to have had zero effect on my writing ability.
Note to the wise: If you want to write about culture clash, it helps to have well-developed cultures.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 12:45 pm (UTC)You guys' juvenilia is all much more entertaining-sounding, and better-written-sounding, than mine. I think I threw away the finished-but-needed-to-be-typed-up MS that was sitting in my desk at my father's house for the longest time, but maybe it's still there. That one I finished when I was 18 I guess? It too featured a plant-named main character: Sweet Alyssum! I was into the language of flowers, and I found out that sweet alyssum meant "worth beyond beauty"--niiiiice, rght? Anyway, it featured fairy lovers, only I was too embarrassed (yes, at age 18) by the thought of fairy lovers to actually *do* them so, yeah.
I have a finished and typed-up earlier novel, The Silver Flower, in a box in the living room. That one I actually sent to a publisher. Surprisingly enough, they passed on the opportunity to publish it. I was so eager to get from each exciting event to the next that I think it probably reads more like a synopsis than an actual novel.
After that I have only a lot of novel starts, no other finished ones, until coming onto LJ and reconnecting with writing. I wrote two novels in 2006-2007, but both of those I think are trunked, though I might resurrect parts of them someday.
I am really looking forward to your current novel. You're already a great writer; I have confidence that the novel will be excellent.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 06:30 pm (UTC)(What is it about fairies? I wrote some terrible short stories about fairies in my youth. There's something magnetically attractive about them.)
Did everyone call her Sweet Alyssum all the time, or did she have a nickname? I think Alyssum would be a pretty good name without the Sweet. It's like Allison, except with extra awesome!
And oh, oh, what happens in The Silver Flower? That sounds like it might be epically entertaining. Are there fairies there too?
Well, I need at least another draft of this current novel to get some pacing issues worked out - I kind of threw in every subplot that sounded fun, so some of them need to be weeded out and others given the TLC to bear fruit. But I have hopes!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 06:36 pm (UTC)Take your time but keep working on that novel! .... please :-)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 12:40 am (UTC)