I wrote a "book"

Every aspiring writer thinks they have a good book in them. It's a line that drives true novelists nuts. Because until you try, you'll never know how excruciatingly painful it can be. And in the end, it may not be good at all. It may, to put it bluntly, quite simply suck. 

Writing a novel is like renovating a bathroom for the first time – it feels like you'll never be done. And when you are, you still feel like it's incomplete. Like you've just wasted a year making something that people might think is garbage. 

Novelists like John Grisham and Stephen King are anomalies. They are the one in a million. They churn out stories like spaghetti through a pasta maker (similes are great, but being original can be a challenge).  

I tried to follow the writing formula as outlined by Stephen King in his autobiography, On Writing, of which, he admits, there really is none. Write about something you know, he told me. (He didn't really tell me, but in a strange way, it felt like he was whispering creepily into my ear). Write about work. People love to read about work, according to Mr. King. Tell a story. Don't get bogged down in research or the details. 

It's really quite easy. Until you begin. Or get half-way done.  

That was the toughest part for me. I got hung up in the middle. Writer's block, or whatever you want to call it, I ran out of ideas. 

Even the best writers struggle. Stephen King had writer's block halfway through one of his more prominent novels, The Stand. But then he had the brilliant idea of blowing some people up with a bomb and, voila!, his book became a bestseller.  

It's so easy when you're a writer of horror. I was writing about a government meeting on climate change.... Pique your interest at all? 

If you do want a copy, I will hesitantly give it to you. Along with some qualifiers, like I was very tired when writing, and I'm really not into writing fiction, and I was just doing it for fun – if I had been serious about publishing, I would have spent more time on it.... blah, blah, blah. 

You get my point. I'm very defensive about my writing, like any good writer (that's a joke). But sometimes it is the bad writers who think they're the next Charles Dickens. In some cases, they're the ones who get the multi-million-dollar movie contracts. 

Have you ever read The Hunger Games? I mean, actually read the book? I understand if you haven't – this is more of a teenaged sci-fi horror genre, an exclusive club that includes some forty-year-olds. As interesting as the plot is, this book reads like a movie screenplay. It made me want to put down the book and watch the movie first. (It usually is the other way around.) Good on her, though. She made tons of money – something every novelist desires but rarely accomplishes. 

I would love to write a book that makes it to the big screen. Even the little screen would be fine. CBC, even. I'm not at all being full of myself when suggesting my little piece of fiction has all the literary qualities suitable for CBC daytime programming.  

It's so much easier to blame it on the acting.... 

The writing, on the other hand? Hmmm.... Do you how many times I struggled with whether to add, "he said" after a quote? I mean, what's the rule on that? And how much description should one have when two people are talking? Does a reader really care about the colour of a dude's hair? And then there's the plot... How does one continually think up things for people to do or say? So many times I wanted to resort to Mr. King's answer and just blow people up. 

 By now, you're probably wondering what I wrote about. Well, I wrote about work. I wrote about love. I wrote about a goofy, unlikely hero. All the classic elements of a CBC melodrama. There are even a few bathroom scenes – no, not bedroom – bathroom. I tried to keep the rating PG-13. 

But in the end, my main goal was to finish. And I did. 

And after a one-year hiatus, a sequel is now officially in the works. The pain has already begun.