Not Novel

I am trying to write a novel.

I am bending over my keyboard trying to turn an abstract idea into words: lots of words.

I am typing. I am sweating.

I am not meeting my word target.

I am experiencing the same feelings I used to have as a child: I have not finished my homework. I am incapable of finishing my homework.

I am incapable.

I am battling against the feeling of being incapable. I am trying to turn off my inner critic. I am trying to be cool – Clint Eastwood cool.

I am not succeeding.

I am coming to the realisation that the reason I have put off trying to write a novel for so long is that I am terrified of letting go of my dream: my dream of writing a really great novel.

I am coming to the realisation that I may never write a really great novel.

I am not Isaac Asimov, whose writings are archived in some fancy place and take up seventy-one meters of shelf space.

I am not that young person - that author ten years younger than me - who recently received an award for her novel. I am sure her novel is actually quite awful.

I am full of jealousy.

I am full of jealousy: how mediocre.

I am a mediocre person pushing against my own mediocrity. I am a mediocre person clinging to mediocre dreams.

I am trying to write a novel.