My Lost Novel

A long time ago, in a burst of cocky self-actualization, I started writing a novel. It was so long ago, I wrote in longhand on legal pads. I remember being excited by the opening sentence. I felt it summed up the whole book, in its forceful self-deluded tone. I shared it with a friend who has published several novels.

“Dr. Goldberg called it transference, but I knew in my heart that I really did hate her guts.”

My friend said it was a bad sentence.

I took some time off and then decided to ignore her. I was on my way to writing the best thing ever.

The story involved all the key elements of my life and then some. There was an ineffectual therapist, a bad marriage, sibling rivalry, adorable toddlers, an adulterous affair that knocked the wind out of me for several years. I didn’t have an outline or an ending but the writing came easily and I savored the build up to the passion of the affair. I couldn’t wait to get to that part but I paced myself. It would be like opening the flood gates of the Mississippi. I don’t know if the Mississippi has floodgates, because I just made that up, writerly writer that I am.

Anyway, I wrote around sixty-five pages and then things got hard. I started using a thesaurus, which I found horrifying. When things get hard, traditionally, I give up. This was no different from all the things I had stopped trying to do: sewing, ballet, rolling joints, riding a bike, learning German, organizing important papers, driving on the freeway, and too many other endeavors to list.

I put the legal pads on a shelf in my closet and I haven’t seen them since. When I moved four years ago, they were the last thing on my mind. Now that I’m mostly unpacked, I have no idea where they are. Did I throw them away along with my teenage diaries? I’d like to see what I wrote, just out of curiosity and maybe to find inspiration. I can find my kids’ preschool artwork but not those fucking legal pads.

At least I have that first sentence! And I have a clear memory of Dr. Goldberg, named after my real therapist, Dr. Goldberg, who would lean over and untie my shoe when she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

I could start writing about Dr. Goldberg. Or the sibling rivalry. The bad marriage…why bother? Contrary to Tolstoy’s opinion, unhappy families are all alike, it’s the happy ones that fascinate and deserve scrutiny.

I could write about the affair, which I find I recall in alarming detail, but Don Henley says Don’t look back, you can never look back.

Is he wrong, like Tolstoy? I mean I hate the Eagles, don’t you? Fuck Don Henley! While I decide what to do, you can enjoy another affair I had, with Mr. Michigan, which I called “fiction” to protect the innocent, whoever that was.