Writers Are the Last People Who Should be Allowed to Write a Novel
Let's talk about how so many of us handle the long game
Most writers are really bad at writing. Not so much in the stories we try to tell - although, yeah, there’s a lot of horrid schlock out there. And not necessarily in our prose or punctuation, despite some wildly varying tastes - see Cormac McCarthy. The problem for most writers is in the process. Writing novels is often slow, meandering, and frustrating. There’s a fantastic beginning and an exciting ending (at least in our heads). However, the middle (about 80% of the entire story) is usually a jumbled, disjointed mess of character development and plot issues that carry on until the third draft. This assumes we ever make it that far. Somewhere along the way, usually around 50-60 handwritten pages in my case, we start to question where it’s all going. In this way, one of the hardest aspects of writing is self-imposed. We fret over whether the story - and the characters that drive it - will ever make it out of our creative wilderness without a host of irreconcilable plot holes and contradictions. Not to mention the worry that our work won’t be the least bit entertaining. Add the given that we writers tend to be self-conscious ego-maniacs who thrive on constant validation, usually in the form of praise from significant others for every dumb scene or turn of phrase we share like a puppy showing off an unearthed bone, it’s easy to see why most writers should probably be the last people allowed to write a novel. Wow, that was an unnecessarily long sentence. Eat your heart out, Truman Capote.
Writing a novel can be a mind slog of doubt and endless indecision. A masochistic endeavor bereft of any short-term affirmation beyond our tightest circles of support. There are, or course, local writing groups full of other literary casualties that are willing to give us feedback, both positive and negative. Certainly worth the time to explore. And beta-readers are great, even a necessity, but they come along late in the game, usually when the book is all but finished. Despite these resources - which we should absolutely use - we never get the validation we’re really looking for until well after the last edit of the final draft. Only then will we know whether our novel is truly successful. And if we measure success by fame and fortune, that validation may never come at all. So, what do we tend to do when mired in “the murky middle” of our life’s work? We ponder the possibilities; fantasize that our 400 pages of blood, sweat, and coffee stains will not only reach millions of readers but also strike a chord those readers can’t ignore and won’t forget. Readers whom we’re hoping will write 5-star reviews on Good Reads and Amazon telling the world how magically our words flow from page to page and how their lives have been forever changed by our brilliant yet accessible prose. Or perhaps we’ll get picked up by a massive publishing company that hands us a $50,000 advance check, promising that their promotion/distribution departments will help us sell at least a million copies of our new bundle of joy.
Again, that type of success rarely happens. Sure our friends and family will give us their undoubtedly unbiased opinions, telling us how great the book is. But even a great book is much more likely to sell but a few dozen copies and end up filling a couple of boxes in the author’s home office than lining the shelves of a Barnes & Noble.
There are certainly ways to increase the chances of financial success, depending on our goals. It’s not impossible to make money doing this stuff. It all depends on your reach and if you can grow an audience. Social media, in its myriad forms, can be a big key. Let’s be completely honest here. I’m having a good time and all but I didn’t just start a Substack for my health. Nor have I just recently begun posting on my Twitter page that I started seven years ago because I like the new management. I want to eventually sell my books just like everyone else. Hopefully, those connections I create as part of my overall marketing strategy will prove beneficial. I know it has worked for others, but this part of my journey is still relatively new to me so the experiment is ongoing. I’ll be happy to share the results as they come along, but Rihanna isn’t retweeting any of my Star Trek memes just yet so it’s probably gonna be a minute.
Being a prolific writer doesn’t hurt. If you have 25 novels floating around the internet and you manage to sell just 2 copies of each per day, that’s a nice little side income. Of course, if you’ve pumped out that many books in anything less than several years, most of them are probably shit sandwiches on white bread. But hey, it worked for Danielle Steel. Ultimately, we can’t rely on even our best work leading us to economic independence. That’s why we so often call art “a labor of love”. That might just be all we’re going to get for our troubles. Hopefully, it can still be enough. That said, I still believe. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.
Fortunately, the process doesn’t have to be the complete soul-scouring I’ve just described. It can actually be quite fun. It has to be. Very few people would do it if it wasn’t. I can’t tell you how most writers handle the entire process. However, I can speak to what I believe is the most important part. I’m a slow writer. And I second guess just about everything I put down. I’m especially bad with a keyboard in front of me. I have, in fact, written this very sentence four times. This is why I write the first draft of my longer stories and novel(s) by hand in a spiral notebook. It basically forces me to write down everything I’m thinking. Which is good. I can go back later and look at all the gory glory with fresh eyes and decide what’s crap and what’s potentially brilliant. I call it Draft 0.5 and I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s more than an outline. It’s exposition, it’s background, it’s an enormous but beautiful info dump that’s been hiding in our heads for who knows how long just yearning to be freed. Yes, it takes a more time because of the added step of transcribing handwriting to a computer screen. But the good news is we don’t miss anything. Every grandiose character and outlandish action sequence. Every bizarre bit of dialogue that sounds like Shakespeare throwing down with Ice-T; it’s all there on paper. Even if we cross some of it out, it still exists now outside of our minds, liberating space for more inspiration. Something about the exercise, the putting the pen to paper, makes it more real for me. And you can still divide it into sections or chapters or whatever helps you compartmentalize the madness.
Conversely, the keyboard is much better suited to editing and re-writes. Moreover, it encourages us to hit “backspace” every time we feel that the words aren’t perfect. I’m doing it right now, in case you’re wondering. And that ain’t good when we’re just trying to get all the ideas out. But what truly makes this all so brilliant is that once the words are out, we can shape them into whatever we wish. Hell, we can even craft our story so that it begins to make actual sense. Even if halfway through it all we feel a little like this:
How’s that sound? Invigorating? Empowering? Disillusioning? Not sure that’s a word. Doesn’t matter. All the emotions are valid because they will be there in your writing. As long as you’re not afraid to lay it all down. Remember, it’s better to have 500 words describing a timeless wood and not need them, than to need 500 words describing a timeless wood and not have them. I think Anne Rice said that.
Okay, that was a lot. I love reading non-fiction, but frankly I’m really not a fan of writing it. After a while, some of my ideas end up slamming together like an octagonal peg in a round hole. They fit, more or less, but I often feel I need to force them together to make a point. So down the road there will probably be a little less of me talking about writing and stories. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Next time: The Secret of the 1000 Souls Well - Part 1
I wrote stories when I was younger. It’s been a long time. It’s even been a long time since I’ve thought of myself as a reader. Recently I started trying audiobooks more. This allows me to “read” or “make progress” during more parts of my day. My commute. Chore time. Etc. I wonder sometimes if audiobooks “count”. I find myself saying this phrase, “I want to be one of those people that reads.” That choice of words says things about me that I don’t think I like. In any case, there’s something about “stories” isn’t there? We humans have language. With that we represent concepts. We invent narratives, and we can inspire collective action with these narratives. It’s one of the things that separates us from other primates. Arguably it’s our “killer app”.
Stories.