What I've learned from trying to write a novel for fifteen years
Last Friday, I wrote the words "the end" at the bottom of a 65 000 words draft of a mystery novel tentatively called Angel of Death.
This is by no means special or admirable. Plenty of people do it every day and, like Chuck Wendig once said, the internet is half porn, half writers. But I’ve overcome many, many demons to get here. I’ve given up on it several times. But I’ve finally done it after more or less for years and starting all over at the end of 2021. It took me more or less 16 months to write.
While I do not feel entitled to give you writing advice at all, I do realize that there’s probably more people who want to write a novel in their lifetime than people who are actively trying to do it. It’s the marathon running of intellectual endeavours. Every mortal soul feels they could do it if they would only put their mind to it. If you’ve written something longer than 2 000 words, you know that isn’t true.
But history taught us what you know matters less than what everyone believes.
This essay is not for the person who is actively writing and publishing their own fiction. If you’re doing that already, congratulations. You’re farther than I am along the way. In the words of old school YouTuber Ze Frank, it’s for people who are stuck between 0 and 1. This is not a primer for inspiration. This is a list of things you need to know in order to make your life easier than mine was. It’s more about what problems to avoid if you will.
Preparation is a drug you can get addicted to
Don’t get me wrong. There are certain storytelling rules you need to follow in order to write interesting fiction. There are no mandatory rules per se, but it’s important to learn how fiction works in order to make it. So, there’s no harm in outlining or picking up a storytelling book.
There are many great ones out there, but if you’re starting up, buy Consider This, by Chuck Palahniuk. It’ll help you put the nuts and bolts of your project together.
But you have to shit or get off the pot at some point. Start and don’t look back. The idea of what you want to do and how it’s going to play out will always be sexier than what you’ll eventually be doing and how it’s going to come out. The thought that you’re about to write something great is comforting, but it’s just a thought. It’s going to die with you if you never begin.
Start even if it breaks the spell. You’ll make it sing along the way.
You have to know what you want to write about
No doubt there’s an alchemical quality to writing. Ideas can drop from the sky like feathers from an angel’s wings. But what makes these ideas great is that they stack up on what you already have. They need an existing structure to embed themselves to.
So you need an idea of how you’re gonna get from point A to point B. One book that helped me out a lot with structuring was Syd Field’s Screenplay. Here I am, telling you not to read too many books before going in and recommending books over books. But this one helps if you struggle with story structure and it was the thing I struggled with the most personally. I don’t want to generalize, but a lot of mediocre fiction struggles with it too. It’s one of the great white whales of fiction. You have to make interesting stuff happen.
Field said that you basically need to know four things before you start: how your story begins, how it ends and your two basic plot points. What are basic plot points? According to Field, a story can have as many twists and turns as you want, but it needs to have at least two: the one where your protagonist gets himself in the situation that will change his life and the one where he gets himself out of it. The rest can be free jazzed, but these four points need to be set in stone before you start.
Figure this out first.
Discipline Beats Inspiration
There are two pillars to writing: creativity and craftsmanship. It’s important to master both.
I like to think of it like construction work. There’s two phases to it: buildings are drawn by architects and then constructed by carpenters, brick layers, machinery operators, etc. As a writer, you will wear both hats, but you really need to get comfortable with your bricklayer hat because it’s the one you’re going to wear most of the time.
So don’t wait to be inspired in order to write. It’s your greatest false friend. Write to become inspired instead. Set yourself a time to write and sit down every day to do so. Mine is from 6:30 to 8 AM every morning when I wake up. It might take you a couple days in order to get started. At first, I had a 100 words a day goal in order to get me started but it quickly grew to about 400 to 500 words a day. 2000 to 2500 words a week. I’m sure it can still grow.
Laying the bricks of your story, you will see nothing but an endless, nonsensical series of bricks. But you need to trust the process. When you’re going to step back and see the forest for three (or the building for the bricks), you’re going to understand what all this work was for. The idea of being a writer is sexy as fuck, but a big part of writing is lonely and unsexy, but do it anyway. So much power comes from just fucking doing it.
Process over product
Getting feedback is crucial, but it’s also quite tricky.
The tough part about writing is that you don’t get to decide whether or not what you’ve spent weeks or months working on is good. Others do. So it’s important to get your work out there and to listen to feedback. It’s difficult and uncomfortable, but it’ll allow you to do two things: 1) getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t and 2) Understanding who your story is geared towards.
When you’re writing it’s important to write just for yourself at first. Chuck Klosterman once said: "it’s important that you like what you write, because in fifty years no one will remember it but you", but once it’s looking for a market, it’s important to throw it out there. You will often learn what is the market for your story by learning first what isn’t the market. So it’s important to be able to take heat.
I wrote this story The Devil’s Shinbone in 2012, which finished 15th out of 21 in a contest and got refused the first place I wanted to take it. But I’ve listened to the criticism and adjusted the parts people didn’t like, found it a home and it’s still one of my most celebrated pieces today. I had some interest from a filmmaker at some point, but I was too young and irresponsible to get properly involved.
What I’ve learned from this ordeal (and that was reinforced a hundred times along the way) is that if you want to succeed, it’s important to love writing more than having written something. Cut, edit, modify and play God with something you already like. Writing is fucking difficult and vulnerable because you expose a part of yourself to the cold judgement of strangers, but when it works, it allows you to feel seen like nothing else. Be a craftsman first. Love the mechanics of the game and not the finished products. Because you can always make it better.
