write a novel

This is one of my top priorities. This and the e-commerce thing.
The personal stuff is important too. The rest is pleasure. Nobody can do 21 things at once. :-)

As regards my cat-novel, I have gone back from writing to collecting material.

... that can give more depth to my cat-novel: anthropology and astronomy. Just saw a film about the meaning of the drawings in the caves of lascaux.

I have been thinking a lot of characters, this past week: What made “Seinfeld” and “Harry Potter” so successful? Why do many people love Haruki Murakami’s books? I think, the main reason is: characters and how they are described.

Every writer is coming to the point, when he (or she) is trying to write a novel, not just a book, but a good story – something that means a lot to a lot of people.

My first attempt was eight years ago. It was a story about a cat who develops interest in philosophy and science. The first version took me over a year and was about 200 pages long. It is still somewhere in my closet …

Then I was confronted with a reality, that was not interested in one more book. I finished my studies, did not get a job, had some crap jobs, started to write short stories at online-platforms. In German. I guess, you see from my writing, that English is not my mother tongue – but the way of doing this is probably the same thing everywhere.

I wrote about 40 short stories, joined a club, wrote a Doctor thesis (as I did not find a good job and wanted to take the time to explore some things) – and half a year ago the idea came up again: If I am using the effort I would put into short stories to write a novel, it shall be finished in a year or so.

The story is about a cat who develops interest in philosophy and science and shall be about 200 pages long. It will be different from the first version, as I changed my views about a lot of things in these past eight years, and I learned a lot, when I wrote short stories – and got a lot of feedback.

So, here is what I recommend to others: Join a community and give yourself time to develop your style and learn.

I think, I am ready to go to the next step now. :-)

Imagine, how it is, if people read your words in some decades. Vita brevis, ars longa, as the Romans said.