The Great American Novel

While still a young'un (I yet reside in this category, I'm regularly told), I began to write a novel with my buddy Graham. We created a world - ah, the power of the imagination ! What a creative marvel is the mind ! - and peopled it with races foreign to Earth. We hoped to win worldwide acclaim and the adulation of our peers upon publishing the hefty tome we were destined to co-author.

"Youths produce groundbreaking work of fantasy fiction !"

- the New York Times

"What are you doing tomorrow night ?"

- the girl(s) of our dreams, previously standoffish and romantically linked with our track-star nemesis, Mario

"Get off the computer and finish your homework !"

- our mothers

Alas, but it was not to be. We moved away to start college, got engaged (not to each other), broke up, lived in Texas, started experimenting with 'pharmacologically enhanced thinking', howled at the moon in anguish for dreams lost.

Well, dreams have a way of haunting you. A few funny things happened to that novel submerged in my consciousness on the way to oblivion. During rehab, I rediscovered writing as an outlet and found the words flowed like honey from an upended jar - thick, sweet, sticky. On the encouragement of fellow members of a writing workshop, I poured myself into sketching little vignettes that came to me. As I sketched, I discovered that I was decorating the edges of a covered tapestry, and an invisible hand was pulling aside that covering (as if in reward) to reveal hints of a more coherent whole.

Then, just yesterday, I learned of the National Novel Writing Month competition. This was an odd coincidence in that just 2 days prior, Graham had invited me to collaborate on a blog to revive Yrunn (the world we had created as teens) and its inhabitants.

This must mean Something.