{"id":5513,"date":"2011-10-31T04:56:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T08:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=5513"},"modified":"2011-10-31T10:23:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T14:23:08","slug":"the-synopsis-of-the-novel-im-going-to-write-in-november-and-a-few-thoughts-about-its-impending-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=5513","title":{"rendered":"The Synopsis of the Novel I’m Going to Write in November (and a Few Thoughts About its Impending Birth)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reflecting on Being Heavy with Novel<\/span><\/p>\n

What’s happening to me?\u00a0 I am pregnant with a novel.\u00a0 I feel it growing, swelling inside my literary belly.\u00a0 In the last few days it has even started to kick.\u00a0 I only dreamed I might do this someday, give birth to a book.\u00a0 The kicking is what really surprises me.\u00a0 When I first decided<\/a> to become literarily pregnant, I worried it would arrive still-born, a lot of words: uninspired, boring, the result of an amateur’s wishful thinking.\u00a0 I suppose that still might happen.\u00a0 But this last week or so, I’ve been\u00a0getting these feelings, this unmistakable quickening, the whispers and hints of a real story that someone might possibly want to read.\u00a0 I anticipate the labor with curious interest, a growing expectation, and not a little dread.\u00a0 I suspect birthing a 50,000 word novel will not be painless, though I want to deliver it as naturally as possible.<\/p>\n

The Synopsis<\/span><\/p>\n

The name of the story is Marigold Man.\u00a0 It’s about a regular joe named Paul, anonymous office worker by day and gardener by other times who discovers the incredible fecundity of marigolds: one plant produces hundreds of seeds, each of which can produce hundreds more.\u00a0 He hatches (or plants) a plan to change (or at least brighten a bit) the world with marigolds.\u00a0 He starts his revolution solo, planting seeds wherever he can, but soon discovers his noble but (frankly) pathetic efforts barely make a dent.\u00a0 The world is still the shallow, practical, prosaic place it has always been.\u00a0 He finds a group of (somewhat) like-minded people who, next planting season, join the quest.\u00a0 This small group, by the third year, becomes almost an army (a word Paul hates because it\u2019s the antithesis of everything marigold), an unlikely congregation of marigold planters, determined optimists who only want a world with a dab of color and poetry.\u00a0\u00a0 What’s so wrong about that?\u00a0 His revolution grows to sizes and takes him to places he never dreamed he\u2019d go, so much so that he almost loses himself and everything he really values in the process.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

About November Blogging<\/span><\/p>\n

I have\u00a020 dishes under the warming lamps: essays, letters, poems, a few ducks, of course, and more already prepared, already cooked, sitting lined up for easy serving on this blog during November.\u00a0 Because all my writing time and energy will be bent on the book, I will not be able to write and post as usual.\u00a0 I had first thought to serve big, thick slabs of novel text on these cyber pages, but wiser heads prevailed and I won’t.\u00a0 We can all be relieved.\u00a0 Part of the idea of slamming down 50,000 words in a month is not worrying about what anybody might think, but just turning on the creative spigot and letting it flow.\u00a0 Knowing it was being read, I couldn’t relax and simply write.\u00a0 Also, it would be filled with typos and wordings I certainly would edit or delete later.\u00a0 I think I’ll post a few snippets to this blog , like maybe the first few paragraphs, and a few later brief passages, but not much.\u00a0 It’s like when my wife is gone for a few days to take care of Rider or visit other family: she makes a few large batches of an entree (like chili) and freezes portions of it for me to eat while she’s gone.\u00a0 That’s how The Life Literary<\/em> will be for the next month.\u00a0 It may not be quite fresh, but frankly, after I’ve thawed that bowl of chili and sprinkled in a little cheese, it tastes pretty darned good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reflecting on Being Heavy with Novel What’s happening to me?\u00a0 I am pregnant with a novel.\u00a0 I feel it growing, swelling inside my literary belly.\u00a0 In the last few days it has even started to kick.\u00a0 I only dreamed I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[841,13],"tags":[898,826,827,1076],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5513"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5764,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}