Also to write a great novel.

We'll see how that works out.

I have some characters jangling around in my head.

1. Protagonist is Hosanna, called Sanna, who originally I thought was in her thirties, but now she's in her twenties. She was an entomologist but now I am thinking more mundane, a college drop-out who has had a string of unfulfilling occupations.
   
2. Her love interest is Pete, though they were involved for only about three months, until about six months ago when he left for Malaysia. He writes her letters sometimes. Sanna is pregnant with Pete's child. She hasn't told him. I am not sure she will. Pete is an ornithologist with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is very interested in the morphology of finch beaks. Finch beaks consume him.
   
3. Mona is their daughter, currently residing in utero. I am not sure she will be born.
   
4. Mima is the elderly woman with whom Sanna lives. She has a green house with a veranda. She was great friends with Hosanna's mother Chia (Haya), and used to work as an abortionist.
   
5. Chia was Hosanna's mother, a meek woman with a subversive streak. She's dead now.
   
6. Jack was Sanna's father, a strict Pentecostal minister who thought colored socks on a woman were a sin. He's dead, too.
   
7. Ruby Jenkins, resident of Mima's small hometown, whose brain is stuck in the 1950's even though she wasn't born until 1981.
   
8. Cyril, who has just showed up recently. A traveller, I think. He has not revealed himself to me.
   
9. California, a golden cat.
   

So is this The Mythology of My Birth or The Mythology of Your Birth? Does it matter if it is about Mona's birth or Sanna's birth? Both are under unusual circumstances. Or is it a mythology because it never happened (in the case of Mona)?

My instinct is to make this a first person narrative, interspersed with letters from Pete to Sanna, and letters that Sanna finds from her mother to Mima.

I am scared to synopsize the plot for fear of making it something dull, so I won't. #