Many people have told me how they want to write a book, and what it would be about. They are not people who read a great deal. Neither are they people who seem to have lived some great story that needs to be put down on paper. Nor are they people who write, in general, and have a gift or practiced skill. But I’m a great fan of optimism, it can get you pretty far in life. Plus, writing can be great fun. And who am I to fart over someone’s aspirations?
The thing is though, that I think these people don’t get, is that writing a book is stupidly hard. I think maybe if you had a severe case of Dunning-Kruger, didn’t really have a great deal of knowledge of stereotype, and weren’t too keenly aware of the quality of your own writing, you could probably bash something out. Anyone, with the perseverance, can keep typing words into some kind of story.
Even I can admire the celebrity authors I also kind of bitterly resent. Writing a book takes a great deal of work. And even if you aren’t particularly skilled in writing, but are some bankable person of note, you will have numerous editors and publicists to get your book out in some shape to that particular part of the market who would highly commend it.
But there’s a caveat here, they have a pre-existing audience. If you aren’t a writer, but have some fame from some other section of culture, someone is going to buy your book, reviews be dammed. And you will get a good advance based on this certainty. This is also true of established authors, and people who might have a solid enough writing background to show some proof of skill. If you’re anyone else though, you better write that book first. Then be prepared to go, cap in hand, to the agents and publishers who might deem you worthy.
People say, and they have told me directly, that someone/I shouldn’t write for money. And this is true. (John Green says it, so it must be true.) But the thing is this, money buys you time. All the people I mentioned above, with those advances, are given time to write a book. The money comes first and the hard work comes later. If you’re not given that money first, given that time, then you are setting yourself up to work a part time job alongside your regular full time one, until you have something worthwhile to present.
I wrote something on here last October about how I’d discovered a pile of work and I was going to try and edit it, and get it online. Naively thinking that I could edit my novella at the same time. It was a nice thought. But I’m not a slap dash kind of editor. Adding to this is the fact that my ‘novella’ turned out to be over 70,000 words long. So, it is indeed now, a novel. A novel which takes up a great deal of time.
A novel which, in my finest moments, feels like an amazing piece of work. But can very often feel like some sort of awful word vacuum that sucks up all my energy. Both mental and physical. Because I wouldn’t be a real writer if I wasn’t beating myself up all the time for not actually writing or editing in every single spare moment of my day. I spent all of Thursday night watching the second half of the third season of Bridgerton! Should I have been writing? Should I have given myself a fucking break? Who knows.
Added to this is the occasional panic that no one will want to read this book, and that it might not actually be any good, when it’s finally done. And continuing to work on something when I have no reassurance that it’s the right thing to be doing is both stupid and ridiculous, and incredibly hard to do.
To buoy myself up I have decided to go back to a local writing workshop. I’m also giving myself arbitrary deadlines to finish the 3rd draft of my book, and hopefully a 4th draft, before my birthday. I even submitted some poems to a local magazine recently. Who responded way after the ‘if you don’t hear from us we’re rejecting you’ deadline, to reject me. That was followed up by an email saying they were re-opening the poetry submissions for that edition. Followed up a couple of days later by a third email, rejecting my second poem.
I mean, really? Wow! I was happy to have the silence of their implied rejection. But then to reject me, badly, follow that up with an indication that my poem was so bad anyone in the general public could do better, and then to add in that they didn’t like my 2nd poem either? The indication being that literally anything else that would be sent in after the re-opening would be better than what I could do? That is seriously the last fucking time I’m submitting to them.
So, yeah, confidence all in pieces again. But I still write, regardless, because I am ridiculous. Looking back I think it would have been a good idea to actually do weekly/fortnightly posts, which I have done on and off over the years. Because at least then I’m reminding myself that I’m finishing things and making them available, and letting people see them. Sitting here staring down my first novel is such a solitary, exhausting experience, I should have remembered to have had fun too.
But it’s more than about it being fun. I’ve been thinking I would get a lot more out of this if I wrote in a more honest way. Honest, in two ways. One, there have been things I’ve been wanting to write for a while, but I’ve always been afraid of how people might see me. Like whether they’d think I was slightly unhinged, or narcissistic, or spiteful. The other kind of honesty relates to the way I wrote when I was younger, and definitely while I was at uni. Back then my writing was a full on stream of consciousness.
I would write sort of like I talk, spinning one idea into other, going down my own rabbit hole. But over the years I guess I’ve stifled it. It definitely comes out, sort of, in pieces like this, or sometimes in my writing workshop. But it’s something I’ve certainly put a lid on over the years. I suppose because stories need structures, and I needed to keep a hold of that structure when I was writing scripts in uni.
But I suppose the bigger reason why I put that kind of thinking to one side, is because people have always criticised the way in which I talk. It comes off as rambling and lacking in cohesion, as though I’m not that bright and not that sensible. People have even assumed before that because I will talk about anything and everything, that their confidences are no longer valid in my unstoppable need to talk about life, its people, and moments. FYI. I am incredibly trustworthy.
I wish I could say, that by writing this it will spur me on to write more honestly, in my own voice. Or that I will suddenly start taking this all a lot less seriously and just tell some ghost stories for a while. But I’m not very good at doing what is best for me. Take for example, writing, in general. I always, ALWAYS, feel better when I’m writing. But, strangely, when my head is full and life feels hard and confusing, I tend not to write. I just burble away like some gigantic witch’s pot.
It is very easy to think of the writer’s life as something sweet and romantic, and artistic and cool. But it’s like really fucking hard work. And not just in the doing, but in the looking for value, based on the reactions of readers. While writing is something I feel compelled to do, I also want to entertain people, maybe even teach them, definitely make them scared, or make them laugh.
When no one is interested, I do take a logical approach. Not everyone I know is reader. And it’s hard to reach a general public when you don’t have the confidence to try and shine brightly. If I were an artist I could display my work much more easily, but unfortunately reading requires time and process, and not everyone is willing to give that.
It is difficult, when no is interested. Or when someone shows interest, but their reaction to my writing is stilted or numb. That actually makes sitting down to write again that much harder. Whoever thinks that writing is a joyful, lighthearted diversion, has got it wrong. Writing is so very exhausting. And if you’re going to do it alongside a full time, regular job, then you better love it completely. Maybe that’s what I need to do for a while, remind myself that I love this. And that a few hard moments aren’t worth breaking up over.
Unstuck Monsters 