Novel Ways to Write a Novel

Colored string, highlighters, bulletin boards, subway rides, voice recorded software, bathtubs, 1940's Royal typewriters, park benches, piles and piles of index cards, 14-pt courier font, snatches of eavesdropped conversation on cocktail napkins, Mac laptops, rat-infested basement apartments, refurbished studios, blue exam notebooks, magazine photo collages...

All part of the novel writing experience...and it is an Experience, capital E, according to this WSJ article, How to Write A Great Novel. What a fascinating look at the range of ways novelists--from Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Powers, Laura Lipman, and more...get 'er done.

One of the online comments followed up with a perfect quote from Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

Here's to hope, salvation, and long looks

A shotglass of oaky wisdom from Flannery O'Conner:

"...people without hope do not write novels. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality, and it's very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won't survive the ordeal. People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is the refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience."--Mystery and Manners