How To Be A Failing Novelist, Part 1

Ride in the backseat when you’re a kid. Read Beezus and Ramona.

Never know where you’re going. Read Henry and Ribsy.

Try to tell your parents how to make it back to your house. Get it wrong.

Ride a yellow school bus in elementary school. Get your first grade teacher to challenge you to read the most books in the class. Go hoarse one night from reading aloud. Get a library card. Read all of the Caldecott and Newbery Award winners.

Ride the school bus 30 to 45 minutes each way. Do all of your homework in the first 15 minutes. Then read Around The World in 80 Days (the shortened kid’s version, but still).

Wear mismatched clothes and off-brand shoes. Never get swooshes or foreign names. Not because your family can’t afford it, but because they don’t want you to have it. Vow to learn something from this.

Hear something called the Bookmobile honk its horn. Run out of your house and step into the Bookmobile. Feel the chilly air from its overworked air conditioner. Watch your mom check out Danielle Steel books.

In 3rd grade, get into a gifted program. Do 100 multiplication problems in under a minute. Write a story that takes up two lined pages about a machine that creates colored vomit.

In 4th grade, get into the more gifted program. Win first place in the spelling bee. Win third place in the geography bee.

In 5th grade, lose at everything.

Throw the ball well, but not the best. Run fast, but not the fastest. Play dodgeball for a long time, but not the longest. Shoot basketball alone at home before watching your favorite TV shows.

Go to your grandma’s house. Dig out the games your dad used to play. Read his Hardy Boys books.

Go to church every Sunday morning and every Sunday night and every Wednesday night. Dress in nice clothes. Hang out with middle schoolers from other schools. Read hard words in the Bible. Discuss complicated texts. Enjoy difficult concepts. Pray slowly.

Ride in your dad’s van for 12 hours to your other grandparents’ house during Thanksgiving break. Read until you get a headache and then watch E.T. and Home Alone and Aladdin on a small television. Fall asleep.

Ride the school bus in middle school. Ride it 30 to 45 minutes each way. Do all of your homework in the first 15 minutes and then read Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler and John Grisham books. At school, trade these books with your friends while you sit in the bleachers during gym class. Also sit in the bleachers during school dances.

Join the debate team. Go to the library, the big one downtown, and find articles on important national issues. Go to debate tournaments every Friday and Saturday in the tri-state area. Dress in nice clothes. Compete with middle schoolers and high schoolers from other schools. Read hard words in the articles. Discuss complicated texts. Enjoy difficult concepts. Talk quickly.

Remember your friend saying, “If you use all of your potential, then you’ll be out of potential.”

Listen to your dad. He says this summer, you’re moving. At the last middle school dance, tell this to the girl you’ve liked for two years and dance with her for five minutes.

Ride next to a girl on the bus for several weeks before you leave. She tells you about Green Day and Nirvana. Don’t dance with her, ever.

Pack your Beverly Cleary books into a box.

Move 18 hours away before your first year in high school. Get a library card. Read all summer and occasionally play basketball at the courts down the street.

Ride your bike to the basketball courts down the street and think to yourself, “I can’t think of anything I don’t know anything about.”

Play basketball alone.

Get into comic books. Decide to be DC over Marvel. Waste your money on Superman and Batman. Give up on comic books after two or three years. Think that comic books are stupid. Don’t learn anything about popular stories or action.

Become obsessed with nothingness. Become obsessed with books where nothing happens. Read an Ernest Hemingway book while lounging in the pool before you start at your new high school. Forget which book it was, but remember there’s too much sex. Many months later, try to tell your English teacher about this book, but forget the title and feel guilty describing it.

Read Tale of Two Cities in English class. Like, actually read it. Believe you can write something grand like that.

Read Romeo and Juliet in English class. Like, actually read it. Believe you can write something romantic like that.

Answer the questions your English teacher asks during the discussion. Watch her point at you after you answer and hear her say something like, “…and that’s what literature is about, making a lot of crazy inferences that are barely there.”

See people in other classes read A Farewell to Arms. Swear that it’s not the book you read in your pool. Don’t ever read A Farewell to Arms because you weren’t in that class. Never ever read A Farewell to Arms.

Read Part 2.