I don’t know about you but this is the year I finish that @#$#@%! novel.
I got two hundred pages of rough stuff. Real rough stuff.
The first novel. The one I’m allowed to be cavalier about, right?
The one people will say, provided it ever gets published: oh that was just his first novel. That’s why it was so childish and so preoccupied with sex and werewolves and time travel.
(But wait: we like those things!)
I could spend years working on it and postponing it and shoving it to the side so I can submit short stories to hundreds of magazines and wait six months to hear back from each of them.
But before I go off the handle, we should take to heart Colson Whitehead’s suggestion for January.
That’s right: shut the f-up and work on your novel.
On that note, it’s always insightful when other writers offer their own published work as ongoing exercises in craft. Because no matter how much you write, the craft-part can still elude you. And you’ll end up with nothing.
He serves up the beginning to his recent novel Finch, along with some possible beginnings and asks you, the reader and writer, to give feedback.
It is a great experiment I’d like to see more of from published authors.
It gives me hope that my own tentative beginning to my novel which features a fire in an apartment complex, a food fight, a congregation of greaser bikers, fishnet stockings and a long walk to a haunted park will someday be salvageable.
4 responses
ha!! thanks for this; it’s so right on– especially “I could spend years working on it and postponing it and shoving it to the side so I can submit short stories to hundreds of magazines and wait six months to hear back from each of them.” too true.
I did do all that procrastinating until I dumped my gf and just started writing. Now, outside of edits, I am done with about 650 pages — voila, book one! 🙂
I’m up to 279 pages on one and re-editing a nonfiction book at the same time, making videos to promote my previous books and planning three more. Unfortunately, it’s like juggling cats. I have, however, stopped blogging heavily. Most of what I say in the next year will come in the press releases and news updates on my sites, and the occasional comment like this one.
Simply scott, your move to dump your gf will backfire on you. When you are ready to “take her back”, she may not be so accommodating. Women are not disposable material like Kleenex. Also, blaming your girlfriend for your own procrastination does not relieve you from your responsibility. Write wherever and whenever you can, even if you have to lose some sleep. Advice from someone who has been on both sides.
We have more books than people can read and so many people write ‘novels’ in that silly November contest that I designated January as National Just Read More Novels Month or NaJuReMoNoMo for short.
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