Novel Ideas

I had ordered three LM Montgomery books on Amazon to read on those long plane jaunts to and from Kenya. Since that didn't happen, but we did go camping and now I caught Jenny's flu, I've been devouring them: A Tangled Web, The Blue Castle, and Pat of Silver Bush.

Pat is fine, but not my favorite of Montgomery's. The Blue Castle is wonderful. And A Tangled Web is just a way way way out there fantabulistic book.

When I think about writing a novel, I always circle back to A Tangled Web. My idea, as I may have mentioned before, is to have a Mennonite wedding as the central event, and then have all these other stories woven spaghetti-like through the central tale.

(I do realize that me saying I want to write a book like ATW is like Jenny saying she wants to draw a picture like the Sistine Chapel ceiling.)

So now I'm in novel mode and I keep finding incidents that could possibly be woven into a story. Like: yesterday I was making a cake and discovered I was out of eggs. So I went out to the chicken house to look for some, and found 13 in the nests--because somebody whom we shall not name had "accidentally forgotten" as he says, to bring them in the night before. So I gathered up the hem of my skirt and put the eggs in it and turned to leave. But oops, I had locked myself in somehow. The only escape was out the little door the hens use to go into the pasture. So with a lapful of eggs I sat down on that awful floor and wiggled my way out, feet first, and didn't break any eggs, but just as my white knees were visible to the world, an old seed truck went rattling by on Substation Drive. I got my head out before it turned the corner and saw that it was ours. The big question: just who was driving and had witnessed my escape?? It was Paul, praise God, which I found out after I got myself out of the pasture after I couldn't open the gate and the story got yet more complicated.

Anyway, can't you just see that adapted for a novel? "Amanda" is helping her mom with the baking and has the escaping episode, and "John" who works in her dad's warehouse is the one driving the truck, and she hates him, or wait, she is a good Christian so she seethes with righteous indignation toward him because she's sure he's the one that pushed the ministers to combine the youth Sunday school classes into one after a glorious year of segregation, in which the girls could discuss anything they wanted and even have coffee at times, and she's sure that John just wanted a chance to make cow eyes at her on Sunday mornings, and impress her with his Bible knowledge, but she has no idea that it was actually the dark and brooding Michael that drives a straw truck for Derstines. Oh wait, I was using aliases here.

Then as I mentioned in my last post I met Matt's friend Peter Byler at church last Sunday. Peter is the kind of guy who would play Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice--nice, smiling, congenial. Not brooding and mysterious like Darcy. Anyway, Peter has just produced a cd of his songs so I got a copy on Sunday and found it quite good. Well, Jenny has been sick with the flu and that cd lit her up like nothing else had done and she wanted me to play it again. And again. And again. The next day it was all she wanted to listen to. I finally scrounged a set of headphones to give the rest of us a break. She lies there with her red, watery eyes and scratchy voice and rapturously croaks along with her favorite phrases. The rest of us like Peter's cd as well, as I mentioned, but in moderation rather than 15 times in two days.

Ok, now surely this could also work in a romantic plotline when years from now "Sara" is a lovely girl of 20 and after being dreadfully hurt by the mysterious "Mitchell" that she fell in love with, she meets a nice congenial smiling man--maybe he's her music teacher at Bible school or something--and something healing stirs in her soul when she hears his voice, a whiff of forgotten music plays. . . . ok I can hear my daughters right now, Oh for goodness sakes Mom, he'd be way too OLD. Well, humph, Roger was 32 when Gay was 18 in A Tangled Web, and that all worked out for the best. And if I wrote about this I could make the sick daughter about 4 years older.

As you can see my fever is getting high so I'm off to bed. Add your plot ideas if you have any.

Note to Matt and other literalists: I am not trying to match Jenny with Pete Byler. I am talking about PLOT IDEAS for a NOVEL.

Quote of the Day:
"Did God create the mind of man, or the other way around?"
--Peter Byler, in one of his songs. Jenny asked me what this meant and thought it was very profound. See? Foreshadowing, or something useful.