Well, friends. It’s September. We’re on the downhill slope for 2024, which means I start looking forward to 2025 and pondering what kinds of goals I might want to accomplish next year. It usually takes a couple months of ‘back-burner’ thinking for me to come up with these goals, but right now, there’s one very bold, bright one at the top of my list: publishing my novel.
I’ve spent the past year writing this thing, agonizing over it, wrestling with it, loathing it…and myself. I’ve received a ton of feedback from my writing partners, which I’ve dutifully tried to incorporate (even when it was contradictory). I’ve written and re-written sections until they’ve lost meaning. I’ve spent time in the middle of the night fussing over it in my head. Fixating on criticism. Praying to the muse. But this week – after taking an essential six-week break from it – I started working on my fourth iteration. And you know what?
I’ve discovered that I LOVE IT. All that work has actually paid off!
If you’ve never tried to write a novel, I highly recommend it. If nothing else, it will give you enormous respect for even mediocre novelists (among whom I most certainly belong). To develop a story containing tens of thousands of words, weaving together compelling characters, a cohesive plot, and an infinite number of details about things that don’t exist in ‘real life’ is a true labor of love (the operative word here being “labor”).
It’s impossible to describe the amount of time and energy required to pull something like this off. Which makes it all the more insane because there is no guarantee that any novel will ever see the light of day. Novelists spend countless hours working on their craft, deliberating over minor word choices, figuring out how to convey the contents of our brains to total strangers. Yet, statistically, only 3% of people who ever begin to write a novel finish; only .6% ever reach publication. It’s madness, really.
Which ought to tell you that, for a writer, selling books isn’t the primary motivation for doing our work. Certainly, it’s important. I want people to read (and enjoy) a thing that I’ve enjoyed writing. But there’s a lot about the fiction market that exists outside my control. And I guess that’s good, because it means I don’t need the permission of the market to do what I love.
Anyway, my first novel is not great literature. There’s no earth-shattering, intellectual prose. It’s nothing, really… except my very own creation that reflects a weird little idea festooned with the contents of my heart.
Maybe people will want to read it. Maybe not. I’m going to finish this baby and put it out into the world any way I can, then move on to the next one. Because writing is how I want to live my life.
I’m so glad I’ve figured that out.
