A Novel Idea

More than a dozen years have passed since my ill-fated attempt to turn a financial planner’s investing insights into a novel.

Time has only partially eased the sting of my collaborator pulling the plug less than two chapters into the draft.

What possessed me to accept this assignment is an object lesson: Don’t let anyone—even a long-time friend—arm-twist you into doing something that is not in your wheelhouse.

The premise itself was flawed: that in just two days, I could interview this planner and download his wealth of knowledge to write the book.

Let’s say I barely scratched the surface and needed several follow-up emails to verify details just to write the first chapter.

Trying to craft a compelling narrative to launch the book led to stomach-churning fits of panic. I discovered that writing this material required more research than nonfiction.

I have read various accounts of novelists who create characters and develop plotlines as if they are taking a stroll in the park. When I tried to do that for this planner, I broke out in a cold sweat.

Taking a Stab  

Back in the early 1990s, I tried drafting a novel. It took a couple of years to finish. Gathering my courage, I entered it in a writing contest, where it drew a “seven” on a one-to-10 scale.

Confused as to whether it had value, I later sent the first three chapters to a veteran novelist I had met at a writers’ conference. He quickly pointed out a number of flaws.

At the time, my work had exploded, so it took me a while to thank him for the feedback. He replied that he was afraid he might have destroyed my morale.

He didn’t. I realized that if my novel idea were ever to flourish, it would take considerable time and effort to revise it. Time I didn’t have.

Then, as MS-DOS gave way to Windows and the floppy disk where the original resided became unusable, I put the novel on the back shelf, where it died.

That experience showed me that I was not called to be a novelist.

Know Your Calling

Years ago, I heard bestselling author Jerry Jenkins speak at a major writers conference. He talked about how he would love to quit nonfiction to just craft novels—which, ironically, is what he ended up doing.

Besides having a string of New York Times bestsellers as the coauthor of a number of memoirs, the year after I heard him speak, he launched the “Left Behind” series. It became Christian fiction’s all-time bestselling series.

Jerry has written a number of other successful novels. If you’ve read any of the books spun off from the wildly successful “The Chosen” TV/streaming series, Jerry (father of creator/producer Dallas Jenkins) wrote those too.

I take my hat off to anyone with the ability to write bestsellers in both fields. Yet, at the same time, I don’t feel bad that I cannot write fiction.

Generally, I don’t edit it, either. I typically refer anyone who asks to the Christian editors’ group I’m part of that has dozens of members who edit fiction.

I know from past writers’ conferences I have attended that there are as many would-be novelists in the crowd as nonfiction writers.

I applaud anyone who has the chops to tackle any kind of writing, which is an exercise in courage (if you don’t believe me, try it). Just make sure you don’t pursue any particular endeavor unless you sense God calling you to it.