About once a week someone suggests that I write a book. Granted, these are likely to be people to whom I owe money, or otherwise have - or want to have - some financial interest in this effort but that has never detracted from the fact that I thought it was a swell idea.

I tell each of these people - either in person, if that was how the suggestion was made, or by e-mail, if it had come via the hexadecimal highway - that each year the total output of Mullings, including travelogues was about 120,000 words which is the equivalent of a good sized novel.

Of course no one had ever suggested I write a novel. But that's what I had assumed they meant: "Why don't you write a novel?"

The thing about writing novels is this: They are very easy to start. They are damned near impossible to finish.

Everyone in Washington, including the woman of Caribbean extraction who sells fake watches on the corner of 19th Street and Eye, has started a novel.

And, having started the novel has told everyone else: Everyone in her circle of friends, everyone at the fake-watch-distribution center, the woman of East-African extraction at the hotdog and chili stand around the corner where she trades free lunches for an occasional fake watch, and everyone who stops by her fake watch stand to try on a watch with a Tag Heuer ...

SIDEBAR

The watches are real. The brand names are fake. No, the brand names are real as well, but the real brand names which are on watches which were not manufactured by, or under the auspices of, the corporations which actually hold the rights to those brand names. So the watches and the brand names are both real. It is the assertion that those real watches have a legitimate claim to those particular brand names which is fake.

END SIDEBAR

... with a Tag Heuer logo on its face that she is working on a novel.

And the lobbyist of Central Connecticut extraction with the $200 shoes, the $50 tie, and the $500 suit who is buying a $15 knock-off watch will say isn't that interesting because, as luck would have it he, too, is working on a novel and asks her - knowing what the answer will be - if she has an agent.

If her answer were "Yes" he would throw up on his $200 lace-ups right then and there, but the answer is always "No."

He will assure her, with a confident air , that he has a lawyer friend who does a lot of copyright work and has promised to shop his novel to the literati in New York with whom he is on a largely first-name bas1s the very second the last page comes out of the lobbying firm's printer, it having been written on the lobbying firm's computer located in the lobbying firm where he is supposed to be presenting his client's issues to those whom he was hired to lobby not writing some novel about which he is uneasy because he is afraid that the sex scenes (he spent so much time getting just right) really demonstrate something he unconsciously believes to be missing in his real life.

Both are telling the truth: They are both working on a novel. But that true fact ignores the underlying lie (that reads like a redundancy, doesn't it? But I don't think it is) in that they both know they will never finish this novel just as they have never finished the novels which they started last year, and the year before that.

Novels have a nasty habit of drifting off into nothingness. Everyone has a collection of first chapters, written with the frenzy, the passion, and the single-mindedness of a new love affair. But in chapter two, nothing happens. Your new lover stops returning your calls. No reason. Just never picks up.

The reason is, of course, there was never a story there in the first place. Just as there was never love there in the first place. Passion, like the glorious and exciting first moments of flame and heat after you've lit the barbeque, doesn't write the book. Or cook the steak.

First Chapter Novelists love to hear people who have actually published a book say that they are often surprised at the direction a story goes because the characters take on a life of their own and sometimes do things which surprise even the writer.

FCNs think this means they can just start writing and the story will take care of itself, the characters "taking on a life of their own" will provide the action.

One of the reasons I have never written a novel is I have no idea how to do it. I have read lots of novels but that doesn't mean I understand how to properly structure one so that it is interesting to read.

I watch plenty of movies, but I have no clue how to properly construct a script which would not make a real screenwriter laugh out loud - especially during the dramatic bits.

You understand, I think, what I am saying.

Here's what I do know how to do: Write essays. And I think I'm pretty good at them.

So this book will be a collection of essays. Mostly new material, but sometimes borrowing from a Mullings.

Is it plagiarism if you steal from yourself? What if I cite the particular column from which I'm borrowing?

Ok. So. This is either the opening essay or the preface. We'll see.

I'll write about 1,000 words a day. This is February 9. Let's see where we are on June 9 - 120 days out. Too bad I didn't think of this on February 3. Then I could have ended on the Third of June another sleepy, dusty, delta day.

If I can find an agent or a lawyer or a publisher then this will be a great thing.

Else, you might see this collection of essays self-published by the Mullings Publishing and Corned Beef Company.

Why is corned beef called corned beef? It is certainly not made with any corn in the recipe.

That, class, is where we'll pick up tomorrow.

February 9, 2003

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