How Not to Write a Novel: Essays on a Novelist’s Relationship to Creative Practice, Artistic Integrity, and a Novel that Resisted Being Written
Liverpool John Moores University January 1, 2026 A Jones
A novelist, unable to write a planned novel, instead creates a multi-genre autocritical text that merges memoir, confession, Buddhist practice, psychedelic therapy, cultural analysis, and photography. The work traces how the writer's life experiences, fears, and relationships, amid destabilizing normative truths, transformed the original project into a literary work of a different content and genre. It offers an illustrative guide for creative writers on technical, psychological, and spiritual practices, testing what happens to art-making when faced with external censors, formal resistance, and the ego's obstruction. The narrative illuminates generative possibilities that emerge from surrendering to the text being written.