You may have noticed that I have not posted much fiction here lately, and that mostly comes down to a question of time. Any new shorts I have produced have been published on
as well as crossposted here. Shorts however, are not my real love. Novels are what I write, and I just finished my second.And yes this is sort of an announcement post, or a celebration post, and also an opportunity to share what I’ve learned. Whether it makes me a success or not has yet to be seen, but I’m not worried about that yet.
I wrote the first novel before ever writing a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or even having a Substack. A lifelong dream to write, whether a novel or for the big screen, and a gentle nudge from Steven Pressfield’s book the War of Art got me started. I carved out time every day to sit down and do the work. I’d also matured enough by that point in my life to realize goals weren’t realized overnight, but day to day, and in the little bits set aside for the pursuit of them.
Regardless, about a month after I started carving out this time to write, I was laid off from my job. This brief stint of unemployment, while exceedingly stressful, turned out to be quite fruitful. While my bank account dwindled and resumes went unanswered, I suddenly had forty hours a week all to myself. Every morning, I woke up and sat down to write my novel. For about two months, I wrote for about four to six hours, and then usually dipped off to the woods to bowhunt for the afternoon. Yes, my former employer was kind enough to plan my layoff during deer season.
I got to live my dream for two months.
I think that was a pivotal psychological boon on my writing journey. How often does one get a taste of the reward so early in the journey towards a long-term goal. I've been motivated ever since.
But what I also got was focused practice. I think during this period I wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-80k words. More than that, I also got a bunch of painful newbie mistakes out of the way. Those are rookie wordcounts now, but this was my first foray into writing. It should also be noted that the scope of this novel was unmanageable for my skill level. I know that now.
Then I went back to work.
But I kept writing. Instead of four to six hours a day, it went down to about two. I discovered that I needed to write in the morning, so my writing got me at my best and not my job. I work a corpodread job that is heavy on the braincells. The last thing I want to do afterwards is look at a screen, think, or try to be creative. So I dedicate my best hours to my personal pursuits.
The novel ended up coming in at around 90k words. Its Sci-Fi and as mentioned earlier, the scope was far too large. Too many characters, and too many arcs. That 90k was only about half of the story I wanted to tell. But it had always been planned with a Part 1 and 2 so I decided to just turn the first part into a book, and the second would be a sequel. Fine.
I then started a rewrite. I’m not completely sure how long I spent on that, somewhere in the six month range, and by rewrite, I mean I pretty much rewrote the first 3/4s of the book before I was sick of it. I’d rewritten and picked at it so much that I barely even knew what worked or didn’t. I had done enough research into craft and writing processes that I was prepared for the moment. And so I shelved it.
I then started writing short fiction, and since an indie author needs an audience to sell to, I started posting them on substack to try and build an email list. Short fiction proved a nice palette cleanser and a good way to still get words in everyday. And then the novel bug hit me again, and so I started on my second.
I just finished that second one about a week ago. The greats if you bother to read them will recommend shelving a first draft once you finish it, and letting it rest. As my experience with my first novel taught me, this is invaluable advice. And so that is now my process.
I’ve expanded a bit too, because I’ve realized that rewriting/editing with a keyboard in front of you is a fools errand. Its too easy to get going. You start remaking the novel and soon enough you have no idea what’s been retconned or what you lost. So now when I finish a first draft, I send it to FedEx, have it printed and spiral bound (which is kind of cool anyways for posterity's sake) and then put it on ice.
Next time I go back to rewrite, it will be with a pen and in the margins.
I was flipping through my first novel, which I haven’t looked at in a year, and wow… its not great. It needs a lot of work if it ever sees the light of day. I have gapped myself skill wise by leaps and bounds. Short fiction helped, but so did writing a second unrelated novel. Ultimately, what makes the difference is words on the page. New words. New first drafts.
Brady Putzke recently posted his 10 Million Word Challenge which is a concept we have both discussed in private quite a bit. And I’m here to tell you that after 213k words of fiction under my belt, I am even more of a believer. Like any skill you only get better with practice, and words are practice. Words every day add up to something. Your writing will improve exponentially, but you won’t get there without literally just doing the work. The only thing equally as meaningful to becoming a good writer is reading voraciously, but now I’m just plagiarizing Stephen King.
Craft books and classes are great, but they won’t get you there. I would even submit that re-writing is largely useless (nuance). You can’t edit yourself into a higher skill level, as Zack Graffman has said in this excellent piece. No, the biggest bang for your buck is writing new stuff. That’s where you get your reps in. Heinlein is simply right.
But back to that second novel. It ended up being a fairly clean first draft, at least I think so. It will need some work, but I feel like I could send it to a copyeditor tomorrow and get back a pretty decent entry.
The second novel meant a lot more to me than the first. I crushed about 80k words with a fulltime job, and several shorts written in between “breaks” (there are no brakes on this train), in about 7 months. But more than that it proved to myself that all of this wasn’t a fluke. It also proved that I have staying power. It also got immensely easier to complete than my first. I’ve started to figure out a process that works for me.
Since completing my second novel, I have dove headfirst into my third. I can’t tell you right now which one you will get to see first. Probably the second or third one if I had to guess. The first one needs work, and I probably wouldn’t worry about publishing it until I had a good draft of its sequel anyways. Or maybe, I’ll never look at it again. I’m not really concerned, because completing the second novel has freed me of the idea that the first has to be perfect or special, or is my one chance at success. It was just a necessary frog that needed to be swallowed.
Its important to realize that writing is mostly a psychological game. I saw a stat the other day that essentially said, most authors quit after three books. And that’s another thing to keep in mind, will releasing a novel to crickets cripple you? Will it kill your motivation? Then plan for that. I have no idea how that would affect me, even though its the most likely thing to happen to a debut self published novel. I do think if I have four or five drafts ready to be worked on and pushed out, that I’ll be too committed to care. Burn your boats has always been my motto, and that worked out for Cortez.
And so if I had to transmit the lessons I’ve learned over the last two years it would be this.
Consistency is key, get words everyday.
Cost of lost opportunity is real, for every minute you spend rewriting and fiddling you lose new words, and new skill.
Nuance here is that you can always go back at a higher skill level and resurrect an earlier work. Question is, will you want to.
Let go of perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist, but if it does, it lives a lot closer to 10 million words than wherever you are at now.
Swallow the frog. Don’t wait to tackle the novel. Shorts don’t give you words under your belt. You’ll never be ready for that first one, and you’ll never nail it. You just have to write it.