Switching to a third-person narrator has opened the floodgates on Circus, my short novel in progress. I’m able to jump between multiple storylines at will, which is keeping the narrative lively, at least for me.

Circus is a crazy tale — part romance, part Grand Guignol thriller . . . like an extravagant silent movie scenario. The circus itself is so surreal and over-the-top that it seems to demand lurid melodrama when telling a story about its backstage dramas and intrigues.

In any case, it suits my mood and is giving me a thrill a minute.

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As I mentioned earlier, I got off to a good start on my short novel Circus but about 3,000 words in I ran into a problem. I realized that my plan to use a first-person narrator wasn’t going to work, because I needed scenes that my narrator couldn’t possibly have known about.

This was discouraging, since I’d already discovered a voice for the narrator that I was comfortable with.  I tried to fudge my way out of it, by suggesting that my narrator was telling us about things he learned of later, but it felt false.

So I started revising what I’d written as a third-person narrative.  It wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined and I’m now forging ahead from where I left off.

And so it goes . . .

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2,200 words into a short novel that will probably run to 27,000 words.  It’s a story I’ve had in mind for a while — a tale of the big top, of the golden age of the great American circus trains, in the 1930s.

After a couple of days of work on it, I feel a certain amount of momentum gathering in the narrative, and I know where it’s going — both good signs.

So I created a cover for it, to make it seem more real, forced myself to stop writing and fixed a nightcap to keep me away from the keyboard — I can’t write when I’m drinking.

Writing is a tiresome business most of the time — but it has its moments, like this one, when I feel excited about getting back to it tomorrow.

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