When I began Lithium I had a very clear notion of the kind of novel I wanted to write, or rather the kind of novel I didn’t want to write. I’d had enough of irony and wanted to write something earnest and real.
Irony is one of my favorite subjects. It’s a powerful tool in the arts, but it’s been abused by chick lit, lad lit (i.e. the obnoxious male response to chick lit and feminism), memoir, and television (VH1, anyone?), so I wanted to avoid it. That meant sticking to realism and avoiding satire. Of course, during the writing, some irony found its way into the story, but all in all it’s a very ‘serious’ novel in both voice and subject matter (although I found ways to have some fun with the story, too).
Now that I’m thinking about Novel Number Two, I have to ask myself again: What kind of novel do I want to write? One thing I know is that I will write it from the third person perspective in the past tense. (I haven’t yet decided on third person personal or third person omniscient.) What I’ve found as I’ve tried out a few set-pieces to get going is that irony is very hard to avoid when writing in the third person.
Is that just because so much about modern American life is completely absurd?
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