Another Page

Today is another page in the thirty-thousand page booked titled: Your Life. Write some­thing inter­est­ing. Include some wis­dom and humor. Thumb through pre­vi­ous pages to see some of the themes, but do not waste your time try­ing to rewrite a pre­vi­ous page, and do not try to make all of the pages look the same. Your Life is a novel. It has all of the ele­ments of a clas­sic if you write it with some heart. There will be lines of com­edy and para­graphs of tragedy. One line of deep humor still out­weighs the many lines of despair.

What is the tone of your book? Do you write as a roman­tic or as a cynic? Would a per­son read­ing it antic­i­pate the next page to see how you react to life’s dilem­mas? Are you “dumb­ing down” the book out of the fear of your own intel­lec­tual capac­i­ties? Are you includ­ing oth­ers in the pages — with the “birds of the air and the lilies of the field?” In short, is the book only about you? How do other char­ac­ters enter and leave your storylines?

At the expense of stat­ing the obvious…does your book have a plot? Is it a mys­tery or merely a dull diary? Have you fig­ured out yet that your novel is part his­tory and part mys­tery? As the key fig­ure, you might want to see your­self on a quest. Pay atten­tion. This quest holds the key to your next novel.

How pre­dictable is your book? Are you writ­ing so that even if it ended abruptly on any page, it would still be a com­plete work? Is there an impli­ca­tion between the lines that no mat­ter the chap­ter, the best is yet to come?

If you wake up tomor­row, you can turn the page. Fin­ish this one as a cliff-hanger. Give your writer’s-heart some­thing worth anticipating.