Back in the Saddle: Chipping Away at The Novel

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

When I came back to writing (I say "came back", but it'd be my first time really tackling the craft post childhood) I'm not sure what I expected to happen. Of course, you read the usual anecdotes: all first drafts are shit (Hemingway), kill your darlings (King), this is actually really difficult (everyone else). Maybe I thought I'd sit down and crank out a few novels over a year to cut my teeth, then produce my Magnum Opus to smugly share with the world.

Lo, the hubris. Five years in and I've yet to complete a major writing project, certainly anything worth reading or submitting for publication. To begin with, I started (and abruptly abandoned) a number of cliche genre pieces. Far-future, Frank Herbert-esque space operas, irreverent and subversive fantasy ala Joe Abercrombie, near-future urban dystopia that would make Ridley Scott do a double take, bla bla bla. I felt quite the impostor with each orphaned Word document, ideas that, at conception, felt revelatory (enough to abandon the last golden premise and add another twenty thousand words to the garbage heap). It was frustrating business, but necessary. I didn't know it then, but I was learning how to write, how not to write, and what I wanted to write. I had discounted (as so many do) the value of time. Time put into the craft, time for ideas and stories to marinate.

The first seeds of The Novel were planted in my head some three or four years ago. It was a different story then to what it has become now, and no doubt it will be a different beast still if and when I'm able to finish the damned thing. A few exploratory drafts have branched from the first, and after life required a break from the manuscript, I'm diving back in, but it isn't time lost. The experiences I've had in the meantime seep their way into my characters, my setting. I know now that these little breaks will bring my world to life. I know now the value of time, the merit of patience. And if the novel takes me another four years, it will gain four more years of depth.

I'm back, and I'm still not sure what to expect. But this time, I'm ready to put the work in.

Cheers,

M.