The novelist is the one who writes himself into an imagined universe and expands it with his own impulses, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and an endless array of characters—all more or less inspired by that one eccentric neighbor with a cat that always seems to be plotting world domination. The novelist is the one who has so much inside that it has to be released into the world, much like a soda bottle that's been shaken a bit too hard. And it needs to be processed—because no one wants a face full of soda, whether at the writing desk or in life!
The novelist is a person who has an impulse, a drive within to dive into ideas, thoughts, and emotions and explore them—not unlike a nervous amateur carpenter trying to build a bookshelf without any instructions. Who knows what might come out of it? Maybe an answer, maybe a brilliant way to avoid doing the dishes, or perhaps just a new question: Why did I start this in the first place?
He is the person with the empathy, will, ability, and, most importantly, the time to dive into issues using the words in language—like a chess player who hasn't quite figured out what the pieces actually do. And the writer is the person who can be a kind of omnipotent god in his own universe—even if he's wearing pajamas and a t-shirt that's seen better days. He's created everything that's there, including the highly improbable love story between an astronaut and a pastry chef. Why? Because he can!
This image of the writer as a god is actually the only concession I make to the belief in a god: an omnipotent god is an image of humanity's need to create security for itself—and perhaps to explain why the phone always disappears when you need it the most. The novelist is, ironically enough, a person who uses this image of a god; he is a creator of his own universe who is omnipotent and can control everything—like a dictator on a day off. And he uses this tool to live and survive, for without getting things in order, life isn't worth living. Like tidying up your desk before you can start making a mess again.
What can happen in the fictional universe is that the people, the characters, come to life. They get their own lives, think, act, and develop according to their own logic—sometimes to the great surprise of the writer, other times more or less in line with what he had anticipated, like when the evil but misunderstood Aunt Bertha suddenly became a vegan in the middle of a crucial fight scene.
Writing a novel takes a lot of effort and requires a lot of planning, perseverance, insight, and creativity—not to mention a fair amount of coffee and a steady supply of chocolate. It requires perseverance beyond what is normal—like standing in line at IKEA on a Saturday—and it requires the will to succeed, the will to reach the goals. And it requires a big plan with many sub-goals, like remembering where you put your glasses (again).
A novelist can lose himself in his own fictional universe. It might not happen often, but when it does, it's like getting lost in your own closet. I think, at least, it can happen that I write myself into my universe, and my thoughts, my head, are filled every single day with the characters I create and the conflicts and conversations these characters have with each other—like an endless episode of a dramatic soap opera.
It all becomes a parallel universe in which I, as a writer, live, alongside the life I have in my real world—or at least try to live in. This leads me to experience more. I have more content in my life than others who see me from the outside and who do not have insight into what I think and write—they probably just think I'm staring blankly into space. But it's easy to imagine that there are many people who have it this way. Some of them write novels, but most of them write no novels; they just daydream a little more than usual. They have a universe inside them of thoughts and feelings—longing and sorrow to absorb. They long for something better, they have ambitions, they have everything possible, and everything is more or less expressed or not formulated in language, but it's there in every single person.
Perhaps we can say that individuals have an inner universe that is partly chaotic, partly organized, with clear lines and directions and clear elements of meaning—or perhaps just randomly stacked books and a half-full coffee cup. A novelist today is a person who sets out to structure this inner universe, which is partly chaotic, and creates his own version of the universe as he perceives it and experiences it inside himself—often with more drama than a reality show.
We could say that the novelist is omnipotent in his fictional universe—even if he might not be able to figure out the TV remote in real life. This means the writer has the power to create existence in his universe, and then the fictional universe can influence and impact the real life that the novelist uses—like when an unexpected character comes up with a brilliant idea that actually works in real life.
When this happens, the novelist learns as a human being and as a participant in the outer world—maybe something about himself, or just that he needs a better chair to sit on. Writing a novel thus becomes an existential task—or perhaps just an excuse to avoid cleaning the garage.
