writing a novel

I am working on a novel.

I am working on an idea to suggest to the textile museum to make fabrics or wallpapers with botanical microscopic images.

I am working on an essay about how we learn through creating or learning new languages that connect actions (words) to senses. How I cook not to become a chef but as part of learning the language of food. How I learn how to learn this way.

I am working on a story about a doctor who picks other people's flowers in the dead of night. she grew up without much money. gets arrested. she grew up carrying groceries home by hand to feel the weight of what they would eat, she carried gallon of milk. her husband has to bail her out. not a story where she goes from one emotion to another, but more a reflection of how a doctor gets to be in jail in the middle of the night. Doesnt matter what you have, how much money, sense of need is ingrained, or sense that what is out in the world is up for grabs is ingrained.

I had coffee with friends yesterday and we were talking about a friend of their's who writes. "He wrote a novel,"JB said. "was it good?" I asked. "Not really, it was the typical mostly autobiographical first novel." JB said. My novel is largely autobiographical. I have already used some of the format and plot elements in other stories now. Maybe I dont need to write this story anymore, I think. But it is my monkey mind of doubt. It is the story i started. I also think it doesnt matter what you write about it is how you write about it. One of the main characters is basically my college self, but I am trying to develop her by giving her an occupation I have to research (cheese making), and making her older and changing the setting from literal Providence, RI to a slightly re imagined Providence (a big greenhouse where Prospect Park is).

With this novel I am at the border between an idea and reality. And at the border there is a wall of doubt and self defeating thoughts.

I would like to think JB is wrong. Autobiographical novels have many pitfalls, but it is how one does it not that it is autobiographical.

Here I go............! Zoom!