I feel a story coming on.

And it’s not going to be pretty. In the last few days I have been trying to compile in my mind what my next novel is going to be about. I’ve kept my eyes open and have come across three significant things, or for the sake of drama we can see these as the three pieces in the “Rule of Threes.”

Number One:

This quote from the WSJ:

“It is closing time in the garden of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”-Cyril Connolly.

Number Two:

These words from this thoughtful blog:

“My family’s ancestors are from the hills of Virginia and West Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley. The Blue Ridge Mountains. They left the deep mountains to find work, to get their children a better education, and found themselves in the tidewaters of the coast leaving behind generations of stories and memories. I’ve always wondered if our family’s dysfunction and fragmentation is a generational chasm that was in some way caused by our separation from our ancestral land.”

Number Three:

A recent news report about a murder/suicide: 1-year-old killed by her father.

I’m formulating in my head how those three threads can be braided together and feeling desperate in the urgency to begin and afraid of what I may find.

I think I’ll reread As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. That ought to help get me in the mood.