Writing a novel is a process. More marathon than sprint. Sure, the ideas may come at you like a shot from a gun sometimes, but more often than not they trickle. Sometimes that next sentence has to be pulled from the writer’s soul like wrenching a club away from an attacker, or (because it’s sometimes painful) pulling a tooth.
Every writer is a reader, or should be. That’s the one rule of writing I wholeheartedly agree with. Perhaps it is the only rule I agree with, but that’s for another time. To be a writer you must love reading. You must feel reading. Otherwise, what’s the point? If you’re writing to get rich, trust me, there are easier ways. Writers write because they must.
Art comes from extreme pain or extreme happiness. Done properly, writing is art. When a person experiences extreme pain they contemplate things. The meaning of life, for example, or why it is they are miserable when everyone else seems to be happy. Happiness doesn’t need explaining. When you’re happy you don’t sit and wonder why. You run with it and probably take it for granted. Not so with pain. Pain requires reflection.
Last week my wife and I celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary with a wonderful steak dinner at Harvey’s in Tupelo, then a movie. I picked the restaurant. She picked the movie. The movie was called I Can only Imagine. It’s the life story of Bart Millard, lead singer of MercyMe. It begins with the character playing Bart telling Amy Grant (playing herself) he wrote the song in ten minutes. She looks at him and says (quoting from memory), “You didn’t write that song in ten minutes. It took a lifetime.” That’s how writing is.
Writing a novel is only part of the process. Once written, the fun part is over and the hard part begins. The heavy lifting. I would rather write a dozen novels than one blurb. The blurb is that part you see on the back cover of the paperback, or the long description on Amazon. The blurb is the part that is supposed to close the deal once the cover has grabbed the potential reader’s attention. It needs to tell just enough, but not too much. Asking a writer to sum up a novel in two paragraphs is akin to asking a painter to replicate her masterpiece on the head of a pin. It’s excruciatingly impossible to contemplate during all those months of writing, until that inevitable time comes, like tax day, and you do what you must and hope it’s good enough.
THE DECONSTRUCTION OF WALTER PIGG, my sixth novel, is in that written-but-not-yet-published stage. I’ve read and re-read and pumped it in and out of Microsoft Word, spending hours pouring through all the blue squiggles underneath words and sentences that don’t fit squarely with the English language. The vast majority of the blue squiggles have been ignored. Fiction should never be written with a style guide at the writer’s fingertips. The beauty of the written word is that it can be manipulated and still be understood. It can be improper yet perfect. What it cannot be is misspelled. It cannot be peppered with clearly obvious typos and gaffs. That’s where editors and beta readers come into play. My first beta reader is always my wife, then a few others who volunteer (even if I have to ask them to volunteer) to give me honest feedback. Feedback is useless if not honest.
The success of a novel can be measured in many ways. Sales. Critical recognition. Awards. Reader feedback. All are important. All are legitimated yardsticks by which to measure success. Luck also plays a part. The most difficult part of being a successful writer is often marketing what you’ve written. For those of us who are somewhat (and by somewhat I mean very) introverted, marketing can be quite a chore. The other, most important measure, is taking a step back and looking at what you have created and feeling good about it. Feeling you did everything in your power to make it perfect, knowing nothing is ever perfect. Writing a novel people will read in days or weeks takes months, sometimes years. Return on investment should come from within first, then everything else will be gravy. It may only take a few days for others to read what it took you months to write, but if you did it correctly, a few of those readers will catch themselves thinking about the characters you created for years to come. That, in my world, is a success.
While you’re waiting for THE DECONSTRUCTION OF WALTER PIGG to hit the shelves, satisfy your urges with my other books.