Beginnings

I have begun a new novel. Writing my arts column (the editor named it State of the Art), writing e-mails, writing on this blog, are all satisfying and keep me going. But creating a new world and new characters in that world is not only satisfying, it is joyful, one of the great pleasures of my life. I am trying something new. I am writing it on the computer rather than in notebooks. And for the hundredth time I am to trying to outline a plot. I seem to have no talent at all for plotting. I have a novel nearly finished, but it is about a woman whose husband has had a stroke, and because my husband had one in January, I can't bear to go back to it just now. I haven't published a novel for thirteen years although I have written many since then. If I needed the money, was more ambitious or wasn't so lazy, I would perhaps be more persistent at revising and sending the novels to publishers. Or perhaps I just can't bear the rejection.