Plot and Themes

I'm hoping this enthusiasm for writing a novel continues when I actually get to the writing part of it. For now, though, I'm reveling in the enthusiasm of the Lexington writing community and outlining my novel at coffee shops and cafes around town. It's an excellent way to spend a cloudy, chill fall's day. I may be cursing it by the end of November, but for now I can hardly contain myself. I assume I will basically fall out of communication as I descend into my imagined world, but I will emerge again in December in time for the holiday madness.

Choosing a plot over the past week has been a challenge. One's first instinct is to write about themselves or personal experiences. I toyed with the idea of recreating a fictional partner year type of experience, written from different perspectives. I thought about a coming of age story of a college student in Boston. I considered a painful account of high school from the always-persecuted underdog. All of these bothered me, too solipsistic and egotistical. I thought about my favorite authors and what about them that I love. Recent reading of Snowcrash and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom left me loving the techno-future, but without the imagination required not to plagiarize blatantly. The Life of Pi and other such epic tales left me desiring a single, unbroken, minimalist narrative, but this seems out of my reach and beyond my meager skills.

Finally, I came upon what I hope will be able to sustain my writing for a month while reading Craig's List one night, that being, the varied stories contained by Craig's List. It is my muse and inspiration. From it, I plan to write a modern Canterbury Tales, tied together by a socially-inept internet addict/code monkey. The theme of electronic isolationism and connection will be strung throughout tales of modern life which include subthemes wandering from modern sexuality to ethics to family life. If nothing else, now when I find myself on Craig's List it's no longer procrastination. It's research.