Gardner, John. On Becoming a Novelist. New York: Norton, 1999.

A few days ago I grabbed this book off my shelf to get some backup quote on prose rhythm for a paper I just finished on Cather's long story, "Coming, Aphrodite!" (about which, I know, I should have written in this forum, but it's hard to write casually and briefly about something you have to also write ten smart pages about). Yes, I also grabbed from Gardner's The Art of Fiction, which is kind of like a Book of Common Prayer to OBaN's Bible—AoF is great for dipping into and finding advice on any problem the writer of fiction finds himself in time and again. There's a superb index, etc. Hence the quickness with which I got my quote on prose rhythms (they should exist, Gardner says, you should have an ear for them, but they should be camouflaged, unnoticeable, which is frustrating if you're the sort of person (and maybe the sort of writer) who likes to call attention to the hard work he's done). OBaN, however, is less demarcated (there's a whole subheaded section on rhythm, for instance, in AoF), with longer chapters, and the voice is less instructive and more ... I want to use the word spiritual. It's conversational but stern. The whole thing seeks an extended, complicated answer to the brief-yet-complicated question: Do I have what it takes to be a novelist?

I'm the exact kind of dork that gets carried away with books like this, which posit that the life of the novelist is one dedicated to the pursuit of human truths, or interconnectivity, or a discerning eye and an understanding of the ways human behavior fits into a structure. The shapes of experience and narrative. All that. Annie Dillard's The Writing Life is similar. These books make me want to sell all my possessions and hole myself up in a room with a typewriter and unending supplies of paper. They tell me this really is all it takes: work, dedication, all that.

Of course I have family and friends and a boyfriend who would all be very personally affected if I were to be so holed up. And by affected I of course mean hurt or annoyed. Who has the patience for such a person? Gardner says that when he's in the thick of a novel, he likes to work for 16 hours a day. Sixteen. If he isn't lying, this means (a) he's not getting 8 hours of sleep a night, or (b) he hasn't a single obligation to anyone or anything in his life but to his work.

Such a romantic notion. Such a temptation to blame my current lack of international success on the presence of other people in my life, rather than on the dumb fact that I don't write much these days because idon'tknowwhattowriteabout or idontknowhowtostartanovel or idrathergetafullnightssleepeverydayoftheweek or icanonlywritefirstthinginthemorning or this or this or this.

Anyway, the semester's over starting tomorrow. We'll see how well I get along becoming a novelist, or a nonfictionbookalist.