This often worries me whether I'm writing a scientific article or a fictional story. It's probably impossible for me to find something that has never been done before at this age. I'm trying to accept it and write in my own style because that's all I can do for now.

Okay, I'm going to come clean here and confess I am working on a novel. I have written five "short" stories (only one remotely qualifies) from a projected cycle of six, and gotten good feedback from friends and family, but unfortunately need to rewrite all of them (the one I re-wrote to submit for publication is passable but still needs polish.) But my wife, ever the practical one, urged me to do an end-run around the market difficulties of short stories by thinking about a novel And I am really liking where it is going after my sporadic but determined efforts for six months.

To me the "plagiarism" question is not too relevant. The whole purpose of working on it is not to become a best-seller and earn a lot of money. We are comfortable already. So I have already built in a few nods to similar themes in other works that influenced me, but the whole process is at cross-purposes to stealing the work of others. When I work on what to say and what choices my characters make, the guiding principle is to find the most realistic possible set of words and deeds that still illustrate the principles motivating the writing.

Recently finished Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life." In the penultimate section she engages what that looks like in process. I found myself overcome with emotion when she finished elucidating the way the work gets away from the author, as a series of choices for realism take it farther and farther from the original principles. In the end, she writes, the work "steals your heart." And that is so.

Several Booktalkers now have "confessed" to having a novel in the works, and good for you all. It must be kind of a hard thing to announce, going public and feeling that increase in pressure, like when you've announced a resolution. What you say about the greater commercial potential of novels is interesting, in that one would think that shorter forms would be welcome in these days of short attention. I guess if that were true, poetry would be king instead of almost moribund. Maybe what modern living makes people want most to avoid is having to concentrate.