Novels I Have Written
For my own amusement as much as anything: a list of the novels I’ve written to date, and the age at which I completed them. This list doesn’t include the novels I started but didn’t finish, which includes some real corkers which I hope to finish someday. Possibly I should make a list of Novels That I Plan to Write at Some Point?
The Running-from-the-Nazis Novel, age 9
I read Number the Stars the summer after second grade and followed this up by reading every children’s novel the library possessed about the Holocaust. But then I exhausted the supply! Woe! Clearly a sign that I ought to write my own.
I suspect the result is way too short to be called a novel - I haven’t read it in years; I’m not even certain that a copy still exists - but I thought it was a novel.
Besides, it had certain qualities that are tragically absent in some of my later efforts - most noticeably, a plot - so it deserves some respect.
The Most Terrible Fantasy Novel Ever, age 14
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and religion and religious culture clashes and maybe theocracy!
Everyone else: And there will be...plot, and...characters, right?
Jin: Oh heck no.
I didn’t deliberately set out to write an inert plotless mass peopled by cardboard cutouts, but that’s how it turned out. And it didn’t even have much empire or theocracy or cultural clashing, either! A wash all around. I’m pretty sure there is not a copy of this one anywhere, and it’s probably just as well.
It doesn’t even have telepathic companion animals. I was obsessed with telepathic companion animals! Why didn’t I throw any in?
Julia, age 16
After the tragic implosion of my fantasy novel, I decided that maybe I should try something a little less ambitious. A teenage novel! Using the characters from this story! Because you can’t go wrong with the most misanthropic and arrogant heroine ever!
Actually, I really like Julia. I like Julia so much that every few months I kick around the idea of someday maybe revising this novel, manifold though its flaws are, because I find Julia and her snarky snarktasticness so entertaining.
Unfortunately, I also saddled the book with basketball and boy drama and a few other things that, even at the time, I found soporifically boring. (I guess I thought you couldn’t write a teen novel without rampant boring boy drama. The teen novel police would, like, shoot me if I tried it.)
And Julia’s magical powers, while entertaining in the short story, don’t fit in the novel. I wasn’t really interested in them - no one gets turned into a frog here - so they just kind of sit there, acting as a signpost that Julia is special and cluttering up the narrative.
So I’m not sure excavating Julia from all the dreck I threw in around her would be worth the trouble.
Terrible Fantasy Novel, Mark II, age 20
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and slavery!
Everyone else: ...you have written this before...?
Jin: Oh no, the last one didn’t have slavery.
Everyone else: Okay then. And you will be adding a plot and characters as well, right?
Jin: What do you think I am? Competent or something?
I was on LJ when I wrote this; my entries about it are under the tag “lotus.” That was the heroine’s name: Lotus Helianth. Her people are into flowers, okay? And I was only 17 when I came up with the name so you can’t blame me for it.
Oh man, this was terrible. The prose is (probably) better than my first terrible fantasy novel (but I don’t have a copy of that first book to prove it, so maybe not...) but otherwise aging six years and writing another novel in between appear to have had zero effect on my writing ability.
Note to the wise: If you want to write about culture clash, it helps to have well-developed cultures.
The Running-from-the-Nazis Novel, age 9
I read Number the Stars the summer after second grade and followed this up by reading every children’s novel the library possessed about the Holocaust. But then I exhausted the supply! Woe! Clearly a sign that I ought to write my own.
I suspect the result is way too short to be called a novel - I haven’t read it in years; I’m not even certain that a copy still exists - but I thought it was a novel.
Besides, it had certain qualities that are tragically absent in some of my later efforts - most noticeably, a plot - so it deserves some respect.
The Most Terrible Fantasy Novel Ever, age 14
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and religion and religious culture clashes and maybe theocracy!
Everyone else: And there will be...plot, and...characters, right?
Jin: Oh heck no.
I didn’t deliberately set out to write an inert plotless mass peopled by cardboard cutouts, but that’s how it turned out. And it didn’t even have much empire or theocracy or cultural clashing, either! A wash all around. I’m pretty sure there is not a copy of this one anywhere, and it’s probably just as well.
It doesn’t even have telepathic companion animals. I was obsessed with telepathic companion animals! Why didn’t I throw any in?
Julia, age 16
After the tragic implosion of my fantasy novel, I decided that maybe I should try something a little less ambitious. A teenage novel! Using the characters from this story! Because you can’t go wrong with the most misanthropic and arrogant heroine ever!
Actually, I really like Julia. I like Julia so much that every few months I kick around the idea of someday maybe revising this novel, manifold though its flaws are, because I find Julia and her snarky snarktasticness so entertaining.
Unfortunately, I also saddled the book with basketball and boy drama and a few other things that, even at the time, I found soporifically boring. (I guess I thought you couldn’t write a teen novel without rampant boring boy drama. The teen novel police would, like, shoot me if I tried it.)
And Julia’s magical powers, while entertaining in the short story, don’t fit in the novel. I wasn’t really interested in them - no one gets turned into a frog here - so they just kind of sit there, acting as a signpost that Julia is special and cluttering up the narrative.
So I’m not sure excavating Julia from all the dreck I threw in around her would be worth the trouble.
Terrible Fantasy Novel, Mark II, age 20
Jin: I’ve got this great idea for a novel! It will have empires and colonialism and culture clashes and slavery!
Everyone else: ...you have written this before...?
Jin: Oh no, the last one didn’t have slavery.
Everyone else: Okay then. And you will be adding a plot and characters as well, right?
Jin: What do you think I am? Competent or something?
I was on LJ when I wrote this; my entries about it are under the tag “lotus.” That was the heroine’s name: Lotus Helianth. Her people are into flowers, okay? And I was only 17 when I came up with the name so you can’t blame me for it.
Oh man, this was terrible. The prose is (probably) better than my first terrible fantasy novel (but I don’t have a copy of that first book to prove it, so maybe not...) but otherwise aging six years and writing another novel in between appear to have had zero effect on my writing ability.
Note to the wise: If you want to write about culture clash, it helps to have well-developed cultures.