D.H. Lawrence and Penelope Fitzgerald

It seems so old fashion, writing a novel.

The novelist sees the pages, the writing on them, and wonders if they'll all add up, and if they do or don't, whether it's been worth it all, and if worth it, worth it to who?

Looking back, many times the novelist feels ways he or she didn't really feel, on behalf of other people, but that was the job, to represent all the characters, to be fair to each one of them and just, to stand up for their rights and honor them as individuals.

The novelist's old enough now to remember when people didn't meditate, when they coped in different ways. Stoicism was the rage, then self-pity and states of consciousness altered by alcohol and drugs. Having tried all of them for the purposes of writing a novel, the novelist comes to the conclusion that simply soldiering ahead is best and then, at some point, to make sure everything adds up, not as 1 + 1 adds up to 2, but as 150 + 150 adds up to 700.

D.H. Lawrence as channeled by Penelope Fitzgerald: 'if you try to nail anything down in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.'

At some point the novelist kicks the novel to the floor, having affixed a heavy metal clip on it so the individual pages can't escape. There, the novelist can kick it around some more, let it sink of its own weight through the floorboards, or be patient and wait for it to rise of its own accord and become the book he or she always hoped it would be.