The Great American (unwritten) Novel

Whenever anything bad happened in my life, my mother always would tell me "someday you can use it as material for your novel." Until she had expressed it, I had never even considered being an author. The first time I had my heart broken by a musician, the first time I broke someone else's heart (an mechanical engineer), the medical scares (cancer, unknown), all the short-comings and failed auditions (Shakespeare), it was always the same reaction-- "your novel."

I thought she was insane. She probably is. The thing is, I don't feel a novel coming, and bad things are happening to me less and less often. Its been almost a year since the last bad thing found its way in and out of my life (XXXX). So that book that will never be written is getting thinner and thinner with each passing year of happiness, which I think would be a good thing. But my mom, so full of faith in my writing ability, might disagree.