My First Novel

My first attempt at writing a novel didn’t go very well. I gave up after the first page. In my defence, I was six.

I knew some stuff back then. I knew that novels were written by grown-ups. And I knew that grown-up handwriting was in cursive, with all of its loopy letters connected, no spaces between them. Therefore, I reasoned: if grown-ups write in cursive, and if novels are written by grown-ups, then after I learn how to write cursive, I will be ready to write my first novel.

My second-grade teacher at Buchanan Elementary School was Mrs. Blotstein. In the opening weeks of the school year, she taught us how to write every letter of the alphabet in cursive. Finally — on one glorious, unforgettable day — she showed us how to connect the letters. Mrs. Blotstein concluded that lecture by noting, “I’m due for a smoke.
It’s recess. Go outside.”

After recess, every student was given a lima bean, with instructions on how to dissect it. I struggled to complete the assignment. That was unexpected. Lima bean dissection had been a daily assignment for many weeks. But I couldn’t focus on it that day. I could only think of putting letters together. In cursive.

When class was dismissed, I ran all the way home. I stopped for no one. Not Devon Flores, the latchkey kid who showed off his dad’s Playboy collection. Not Bruno Ferrarissimo, who always insisted on fighting in the mud, and who always lost. Not Kathy McGinty, the giddy redhead who experimented with kissing on the lips. And certainly not Mack and Mike, the overnourished Zimmerman twins, who had committed at this early age to a clearly defined set of life goals that began with pinning the heads of other boys onto the sidewalk under their massive buttocks.

There was homework. I didn’t care. I bolted into our ground-floor apartment, found a pad of paper and a pencil, sat down at our little dining table, and started writing my novel.

Dad would be home from work soon. By the time I heard his footsteps in the hallway, I had finished the first page.

He opened the door.

“Dad!” I held up the paper. “You are looking at page one of my first novel!”

“Hmmph.” He hung his fedora, then his overcoat.

“Take a look!” I handed him the paper.

He glanced at it. “Hmmmph.” He had taken two seconds to evaluate my work before handing it back and migrating to the kitchen.

“So?” I asked. “What do you think?”

“Ehhh….” He took a bottle from a shelf I couldn’t reach. He answered my question while pouring some brown liquid into a glass. I remember his words to this day: “I think your novel leaves something to be desired.”

I had never heard that expression before. “I’ve never heard that expression before,” I said. “Something to be desired — what does it mean?”

He plunked into his armchair. “It means there’s something missing.”

“What?” How could anything be missing from my polished draft?
He lit a cigarette.

“What’s missing, Dad?”

He exhaled a puff of smoke. “There should be spaces,” he said, “between the words.”

“No!” I found his attitude deeply offensive. “No, Dad! This is cursive! All of the letters are connected! See?”

“Sure,” he grunted. “The letters are connected. But you still need spaces between the words.”

Nothing I said could bring him around to my point of view. “I’m pretty sure I’m right about this,” he said with a stubbornness that I absolutely did not inherit.

Following the trauma of my father’s rejection, I would wait fifty years before making another attempt to write a novel. If you work in publishing and would like to see it, just let me know. You may find things there that you don’t like. But you must admit: there are spaces between the words.

 

Performing globally in his previous career as a composer and pianist, Chris Malloy somehow avoided triggering any major international conflicts. Although “My First Novel” is a true story, Malloy now mostly writes fiction, populated by his imaginary friends, who exhibit abundant flaws that are based on his own. He plans to make a fortune by suing for defamation.