Chipping away at my novel Point of Venus , my first attempt at this genre I feel like I’m making it up as I go along but things seem to be working out so I must be on the road to the vine covered golden archway of an Ending/Beginning. Over the months people have asked me what it’s about and when I start rambling I usually know I don’t know what the hell it’s about yet because it’s like a reverse pyramid of ‘abouts’; there’s surface things skidding around and as your drill deeper and deeper it becomes more and more pointed and becomes the driving force that stains or coats or galvanizes or cauterizes everything above it; to this point, Lona Margolis has done things and interesting things with fashion, poetry, pursuing the Faceless Man, self delusion and handling her dynamic trans dimensional SexEssence beauty but I haven’t been able to answer the question of what it’s about until a few nights ago when I hit what intro to fiction writers classes refer to as a ‘plot point’ though if I hit one of those it better crack open and some pretty relevant tendrils better spill out.
Sometimes it spills out like creamy black beans running from spatula police and sometimes you have to grapple and shape and wrestle until you have smelted something that shimmers in the reality of this world, through words.
The answer to the question, “What is your novel about?” is forgiveness. or release, or however you coat it in whatever culture you inhabit. I like to say holding onto a sin is hard but holding onto a forgiveness will age you like a raisin in two suns. Lona is about other things too but if I can grind and release through as much forgiveness as possible I’ve really lost a lot of lead in the soul belly.
The next four weeks of life will be juicy and dicey. More will be described August 29th.
Also, once I read about how much sex Olympiads had it makes me wish I stuck with ping pong and tennis when I was in high school. Or better yet, one of those sports like shooting where you can play into your forties so having sex every four years in a different country or being around people who are having sex would be guaranteed. More power to them. If it relaxes you before hitting the high horse, go for it USA.
