I'm getting towards the end of a first draft of another novel, which can mean only one thing: It must be a good time to reorganize my bookshelves!
The novel is going to be a pretty short one. Hard to say right now, but, if I had to guess, I'd say it'll probably end up being about 60,000 words? Won't really know until I start working on the rewrites, but it'll be short. That's fine by me. The last novel I finished ended up at around 135,000 words. This time around, I wanted to do something a bit more wham-bam.
And also, I just wanted to finish another novel. Been going through this weird thing of starting novels then abandoning them around the 30,000 word mark. Some of that ---maybe most of that-- has been a concentration and process problem. For most of my life, writing a novel has been an act of sustained and devouring concentration. Always had a hard time balancing writing with, well, life. Didn't really care to, if we're being honest.
That approach has served me pretty well in the past, but it has drawbacks. The big one? If I don't write for two or three days in a row, I just exit the book. Sometimes I can force myself back into it, but sometimes I just can't. It's like a tunnel collapse.
Maybe you can imagine this, maybe you can't but . . .
That approach creates a lot of pressure. Working like that is a big fucking commitment. Writing in general means giving up things, but writing like that means giving up a lot of things. Not to put too fine a point on it, it means giving up life. And that puts too much pressure on the book. Cause, if you're going to give up all that, the book better be worth it. And is any book worth that? I don't know. When I was younger, I felt differently.
Part of that might be because I could imagine a future where I got paid to write, and where that held some interest. Most of it is probably because I lacked the age and experience to think about the total lack of return on all that effort and sacrifice. And I don't mean, like, in terms of not having a writing career. (Always been a bot wishy-washy on that.) More in terms of the relationships you neglect, the life you miss out on, that sort of thing. That sort of sacrifice gets harder to justify. Or it should, anyway. If you have any sense.
It also makes the problems harder to deal with. About 30,000 words into any first draft, you're going to have problems. Serious ones! If you know what it takes to finish a novel, like you've gone through it a few times, it's pretty easy to just look at those problems and give up. You think about all the misery and work ahead of you, compare it to what you have, and have to wonder -- is this fucking thing worth it? The answer, of course, is no!
And that's before you even think about the result -- most likely three form rejection letters from the publishers good enough to bother sending you one. Even if you're very lucky --VERY VERY LUCKY!-- and actually manage to sell the thing, that's probably a tiny advance, a huge headache, and a bunch of work you didn't sign up for.
All that, taken together, creates a pretty good reason to quit.
Now, to be clear, I'm not against this approach. I think, for young writers in particular, this sort of focus might be necessary. Finishing even the first draft of even a terrible novel is pretty fucking difficult. Like, really fucking difficult.
This is probably going to sound crazy or sensitive or something, but I used to sometimes hear people say things on the socials like "I should write a novel about ____" or whatever and many of these people were serious. Other people would be like "oh, you should, I'd read it." And hearing that shit makes me lose my goddamn mind. It's like saying, "I should compete in the Olympics." Just the mere fucking fact you think you can do that is kinda offensive. Like, if you haven't ever finished writing a novel, you haven't even played the sport! You've just watched it on TV! I mean, goddamn! Have some fucking respect is all. It ain't that easy. You're not going to get a thumbs up and feedback on every 140 characters. Be lucky if you get something like that on every 140 pages, or on 140,000 words.
Novels are a lonely business is all I'm saying. It's isolating.
But, yeah, that focused approach has served me well and I'm not sure there's another way to learn how to write a novel. You have to finish a few, you know? That takes time and it takes sacrifice and it takes a lot of focus and all of that has to come from within.
Now, I mainly write for the drawer and I'm fine with that. But, as I've aged, writing for the drawer is not worth the sacrifices the focused approach requires. I've been aware of that for a while now. But it's not so easy to change methods. I've been trying to find a way to write novels in the background of my life, not having them overtake the whole thing, since LA.
Trying, failing, trying again. Every attempt getting harder.
With this one, something changed. I was able to keep it in the background, and I'm also pretty comfortable, this close to the end of a first draft, saying that I'll finish it.
What's changed? Something about my concentration. Something I learned running trails and hills. Some change in my head that lets me dip in and out of things a bit better.
And it's probably going to sound like a motto, but, if it's a motto, its one my very body has learned. It's just pacing. Sometimes, you need to walk. Sometimes, you need to stop. Sometimes, you just want to stop. Sometimes, you get hurt. That's all fine. Every step forward counts. Doing anything is better than doing nothing, but sometimes doing nothing is just resting, and you need to rest. Have an apple. Look at the view. Enjoy it.
Took me a lot of panting and sweating to learn this shit.
So, if all I have in me in a day is a couple hundred words, or I have nothing, that's fine. It's something I've learned to cope with. Some days, maybe I can sprint. Some days, I got nothing. Other days, not so much. Sometimes I take a wrong turn and got lost in the woods. Shit happens. Can always double back. It doesn't need to be perfect. Doesn't need to be headlong dash to the finish line. Ugly is fine and wrong turns are fine. Sometimes you gotta backtrack and maybe you learn something. I mean, it's probably already taken me well over 100,000 words to get to the 60,000 or so I might end up with, and I'm fine with that amount of waste in a first draft. Just keep going, sometimes backwards. That seems to work.
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