Anxiety Pancakes: Life in the Middle of a Novel (Day Two)

In my novel, The Dead Celebrities Club, I’m trying to work out if people are capable of change. I’ve always believed that people evolve rather than change. But some people do change drastically going right back to St. Paul who was zapped with god’s power when he was on his way to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus.

Are these conversions authentic, or delusional? We live in a cynical age. I suspect most of us think someone who has been selfish and unethical is not going to undergo a conversion. And yet why not? Or if not a conversion, how about an evolution–which is more in keeping with my belief system. That is, I think a spiritual conversion may be as simple as extending your sympathy to the world beyond yourself.

In some ways, this philosophical issue is the least of my problems. It will unfold with the narrative, and my story telling brain will give me the answer.

My more practical issue is to keep writing, as I said yesterday. To put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. How do I do this? I daydream, I make notes, I look at research; then I talk some scenes from my story into a digital recorder and myself or my part-time assistant Mariel transcribes it. While I’m composing I think–you idiot, what on earth are you doing? This is absolute crap! You’ll need to go back and completely rewrite every page. ONLY NOT NOW. You have to go on. (Tomorrow: my number one bugaboo: why I question the act of writing fiction itself.)