“But I can’t write fiction,” I heard myself say a few nights back as I hoisted myself up to the rim of the hot tub. School had just let out for the summer, and soaking in the heat, I felt the grind of the year dissolving into the mist. To jumpstart vacation mode, I was sharing with some friends an idea I’d just had for a novel, ending with the disclaimer.

Both friends peered at me over their wine glasses, then looked at each other. I knew what they were going to say before they said it, being the creative, carpe diem, life-coaching-guru types that they are. “Well, then, of course you can’t, if that’s what you think.”

We all knew it wasn’t necessarily true. What was true is that I’d never tried to write fiction. Not beyond the perfunctory short story for a class, or an occasional flash-fiction piece that a poem had forced its way into when it didn’t want to be a poem.

I’m sure most poets, like me, love to read fiction. We love words, after all. My favorites have always been the huge, complicated stories that suck you in for three or four days during summer vacation, the way Dickens and Austen and Pynchon and Atwood did back when I was on a spring break from college. I even enjoy reading authors’ accounts of how they wrote their tomes, like Dostoyevsky, who cranked out pages in his freezing apartment, working under a slave contract, dictating Crime and Punishment to his young bride while staving off pneumonia and epileptic seizures. (How romantic!)

As much as I love reading novels, however, I’ve never felt compelled to write one. Which brings us back to the other night in the hot tub.

We’d been discussing Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, a clever and intricately plotted romp through the many lives of Ursula Todd—a kind of Downton Abbey meets Groundhog Day affair. I shared with my friends that it’s been referred to as a “high concept” novel – a term I’d been hearing for several months and had assumed meant “highly literary.” I’ve since learned it actually means “will make mega-bucks.”

A “high concept” book, according to a recent article in Writer’s Digest, has any number of elements that ensure its being a hit, such as a wildly pathos-inducing protagonist, a unique plot spin or twist, a gimmicky set up or concept, or cross-audience appeal. (Atkinson’s book is all that, plus it’s literary. And 500 pages. I’m in awe.)

So I told my friends about how seconds after I’d read this definition, I’d had a flash of insight: the makings of a perfect high-concept story. I shared my idea with them, and they agreed with me. Yes! they said. You should write it! Which was when I blurted out the line about not being a fiction writer. Then I rattled off the reasons why:

“Who has the time?

“Not during the school year—I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it.

“I’d have to do a bunch of research. By then it wouldn’t be timely any more.

“I’d have to cut back on other things to make time for it. Like lounging in hot tubs with friends.

“What if I got halfway through and decided it wasn’t working?

“What if I spent two years on it and it ended up a disaster?”

Suddenly I stopped. Was I talking about a novel . . . or a relationship? Some of these lines sounded exactly like the excuses I used to give for not wanting a boyfriend.

And that led me to wonder: Did I choose to write poetry instead of novels because of commitment phobia?

Most poems are blessedly short. I rarely spend more than a couple of days working on one—sometimes just one afternoon. But a novel! A big, messy, overflowing thing with multiple characters, scenes, chapters, research, outlines and storyboards—could I handle the chaos for the year or two it would take? I don’t know if I’m cut out for it. How do so many people pull it off every year? My admiration for them grows by the minute, just considering the process. Much like my admiration for couples who still seem happy on their tenth or twentieth or—gasp—fiftieth anniversaries.

It took me years to accept and eventually embrace my commitment phobia with men. And yet . . . this high-concept idea for a novel is really, really good . . .

Maybe it’s time to find a therapist.