Writing A Novel

I want to write a novel.  This is not the first time the urge has gripped me.  In fact, I have written four novels, I believe, none of which have been published, although I cannot claim that I am like some unsung Milton or whatever the expression is, unknown in a country hamlet, since from the moment I published my first non-fiction book on ancient epic poetry with Doubleday I have been introduced to numerous people in the publishing industry, have dined with publishers, editors, agents, all of them of great renown.  Of the books that I have published the first "went over the transom" as they say, i.e., not solicited by Doubleday, the second commissioned by that outfit, the third suggested to me by La Terza in Italy, the fourth solicited by the author/editor John Gardner for a series he was contemplating, the fifth born from an idea in the head of senior editorial staff of Hyperion, and this sixth and last picked up as a second thought after a twenty year hiatus by a publisher and editor who had been shown it and rejected it in the first instance.  But no one wants to publish my novels, although almost all of the welcoming and helpful people engaged in those other publications were kind enough to read my manuscripts.  I am sure they read them in the first instance because they recognized that I knew how to write and were thus trolling for new fiction.  But, since such a large variety of people in the business politely declined, I have to believe that I don't have the chops for fiction, although one more sympathetic than the others once said to me that if I were to come by his office, he would be happy to sit down with me and go over the list of agents and select those who might like my stuff, and so after months, maybe years of submissions and rejections I might strike pay dirt.  I have known persons who submitted a manuscript for inspection to agents and had it rejected twenty odd times before finding one who would take it on.  It is not that I would hate the repeated rejections, although I am not good with that.  I have a friend who is an actress who for the past fifty years has faced that over and over again in audition, who despite it, gamely goes out again and again and indeed finds work, but oh, the first polite moment of rejection.  I find that hard.  "This is a great story, but I don't think we have a niche for it."  "You characters come alive in the very first page, but somehow, the implications of their story is lost on me." "This is more like Junior Adult fiction, not for us, and, no, I really can't recommend anyone who does that sort of thing." I don't send my stuff around, I don't self publish.  Why?  I am lazy for one.  I want to write and send the stuff away and have someone else deal with it.  Then, I am a serious ecologist, well, of sorts, and I am not sure the world needs these works of mine, cluttering up the environment of the mental/aesthetic life of the community.  But, there's another story brewing in my head, a shameless rearrangement of the facts of my life which I covered in last year's memoir.  I am getting to the point that I want to write it.  I may have to stop these blogs for a few months.  My career calls!