This is a fantastic quote when it comes to writing a novel: “Starting a novel isn’t so different from starting a marriage. The dreams you put on these people are enormous.” – Ann Patchett
Have you ever thought of the novel your writing as a marriage partnership? That you and your novel, for a time, become one as you sit down and write out all the details that will make it complete one day? I hadn’t until I read what she wrote for today. It is a partnership of sorts. We will spend many hours writing and editing this novel as we get it to a place to start submitting it to agents and/or publishing houses.
I think sometimes it’s more of a love/hate relationship. The characters in our novels can talk to us making us crazy over the sudden turn they want to take and where you’d thought it’d be. (Yes, many authors hear their characters in their heads. We’re not crazy. Just authors. 🙂 ) We can get frustrated at the all of a sudden dead-end we come to because we thought for sure the story would go in that direction but instead it was just a rabbit hole. Or the mighty divorce of it all when we realize the story we’ve been writing is going nowhere so we must say goodbye to it. Who knows, maybe someday in the future we will be able to come back to it but for not it’s time for a “divorce” of sorts from the novel.
Personally, I’ve had a start and stop kind of relationship with my novel as my real life decides to intervene (like moving to Alaska).
