A great poet (and greater friend) asked aloud today, ‘Why are you writing this novel?’ I decided to share the answer here. I am writing a novel about a person, a place, and an idea. It centers on the Arizona sprawl and joins the characters I built as a teen with the kind of characters I shape as a man. Why am I doing it? I’m writing this novel because I have questions about the place where I live–where it is going, what is influencing those changes, and the cultures that fuel and wither us while we are here.
I haven’t answered these questions yet, but before I do I think that I need to recognize that this novel is largely about that collision of who I have become and who I thought I was and would be at a certain point in my past. This is best embodied through the character from my past teaching the character of the present who has been knocked off his life path. Any novel is inherently about the person writing it and something that person is or has gone through in their life. The manifestation of that abstraction or feeling can take many forms. It is influenced by the culture we absorb (popular or otherwise).
The moment I moved to the suburban town I live in I knew there needed to be a story about it. I wold drive to the city and see the walls of the small communities that seemed to ring the city like Wall Maria from Attack on Titan. There are so many questions I have about this tiny oasis in the desert and the desert itself, which leads me towards writing about that.