Sometimes, when authors sit down entrenched in their novels we need moments that make us smile. Writing a novel is serious business. Making our audience laugh on the pages is more difficult to do than stand-up comedy because our audience starts our invisible. We don’t even see the outline of their shape when we start out with our first few lines. We don’t see their tears at home as they read our tragedies. Nor do we hear their laughter when our sidekick breaks the tension with a joke.
Our audience is silent and and invisible as we twist and clutch our manuscripts on book launch day. We ask, did I write a good book? Will anybody else read it? Yes, it’s easy to go back into hiding behind our devices because we can’t see the crowds in the bookstores or the clicking of the buy button. Many of us have launched to crickets with our first novels and some of us are thankful about those forgotten first books.
Some of us soldier on and write a second novel even if our readers never made a peep. We all know that we need to continue the journey of writing but we all dream of the day our novel hits number one.
What’s the point of today’s post? Laugh, smile, and cry. Then, laugh again. Make a wall of quotes, post-its on paint that will give you the range of human emotions we’re capable of feeling. Enjoy the process. It’s our job to feel for our characters. It’s our job to become our characters and summon the feeling onto our pages.
In the words of Sylia Plath, no don’t get depressed, we must find all of our “fat purple figs”. We don’t have to choose over the other. We just have to pick one for our novel and take a bite for our reader. Let them know how sweet, juicy, and plump our characters lives are and we’ll have the novel we desire.
Follow as I post on my progress throughout the month and share the experience.
~Yoon Ju
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