4 Ways to Smack Your Writing Grinch Down

It aint easy, this whole writing-a-novel malarkey.

It's not supposed to be easy, obviously, otherwise everyone and Pavlov's dog would be doing it and MyFace and TwitterBook would be a whole lot emptier. Writing a novel that you hope someday will get published is definitely not an endeavour for softies or quitters, because with every novel you attempt to write you get a free gift. You didn't ask for it, and once you know you have it you certainly don't want it, but there's no shop to take it back to so you're stuck with it. I'm talking, of course, about your Writing Grinch.

You know that nagging voice in your head that tells you your writing sucks? That no-one's ever going to read your crappy novel anyway, even if you actually finish it, which you probably won't because it sucks so much? That's your Writing Grinch. Stephen King and many other writers talk about having your Writing Muse show up if you spend enough time putting in the graft - well, the bad news is your Writing Grinch does a pretty good impression of your Muse, and it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes (because even your Muse can be hard on you.) Tricksy little so-and-so, that Grinch. So what we need to do is arm ourselves against him; know his battle tactics and be ready to kick his butt like Buckaroo when he comes a-calling. (Note: I'm using 'he' throughout this because my Grinch happens to be a he. Yours might be a 'she' or even an 'it.' Adjust as necessary.)

My Grinch has been something of a regular companion during my draft two process ('bless' his little steel-capped bovver-boots.) So, because I'm the kind of person who cries at charity appeal adverts on the telly, I feel a need to encourage anyone out there who's thinking of abandoning their novel along with their writing dreams. I'm not quitting on mine, so I can't let you quit on yours without a fight!

So, without further ado, let's run down through the Grinch's most common mantras...

1 - "This novel is unpublishable. No agent/publisher is ever going to want it, because it's not what anyone would want to read."
...And so, what's the point of even finishing it, right? Give up, and start on something that has got a chance of seeing the light of published day. Except... didn't your Grinch say that about the last one you didn't finish as well - and the one before that, and the one before..? I think there's a pattern emerging here. Thing is... he might well be right. This novel you're currently slogging your guts out might not ever get published - in fact, if it's your first, the odds are pretty high that it won't. But the only way to even have a hope of ever getting the medal is to finish the race. Keeping your eye on the prize is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to keep on running towards that finish line, but if that's all you're in it for... well, it won't sustain you when that Grinch starts whispering in your ear and sapping your confidence. After all, nobody knocks themselves out to get a prize they no longer believe they'll win.

So at least for now, forget the prize. It's experiencing the whole journey, from the very beginning right to its end, that matters. Just keep putting one word in front of the other, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Map out the journey and learn from each stage of it, so that you can take your experiences with you for the next one. And the next and the next. Because the best way to get to the Holy Grail of being published is to teach yourself to stay on the journey towards it - time after time after time...

2 - "You know, everybody laughs at you behind your back - you and your crazy dreams about getting your novel published. They all think you're wasting your time."
It's lovely when you have loyal friends, family and spouse around you, encouraging you and being totally supportive of your writing endeavours. Lots of writers have them in their lives - and, unfortunately, lots don't. If you're in the second category... well, there's not a lot you can do to remedy that situation, I'm afraid. Actually, finally get your work published? That'll hush their sniggering, disapproving mouths, right? Pfffft, no. Unless you can morph into the literary love-child of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King overnight (and flash the resultant wads of banknotes in the faces of your naysayers as proof) you can merely expect comments along the lines of "well, I think I might write a book as well then, if it's that easy to get published..." Seriously, I wish I was joking - but I'm not. Been there, heard it, and  - trust me, it's like a knife in the heart every time.

So you can't write for those people. You can't write to win them over, prove a point to them or to finally show them - finally - that you're not just a feckless dreamer who'll never amount to anything worth talking about. Harsh as it sounds, your best strategy is to teach yourself to not give a flying eff-word about what they think. Ever. You are a writer, and you don't need their approval - or anyone else's, for that matter - to do what you do. And if there's any part of you that's doing that, even if it's because you think it'll make even the tiniest difference in the long term, stop it. Stop that shizzle right now.

The only people that will ever matter when it comes to your writing is the people who want to read your writing. You won't know most of them - you'll probably never even meet most of them. But they're the people you write for. Not the unbelievers in your life. Screw them.

3 - "Okay, so you finish this novel - and then what? What if this is the only novel you have in you? What if, after this one, all your inspiration dries up and you can never write another one ever again?"
Because creativity, after all, is like a beautiful snowflake - unique and special and, once it's had its moment of glory melts away into nothing and disappears forever...

Mmmm... no, not really. You're not necessarily destined to 'use up' all the currency in your Bank of Imagination on just one novel, any more than you would eat the most delicious meal in the best restaurant in the world and then immediately say "Well that's it - nothing will ever come close to this experience and so from this moment on there is no point in eating anything else ever again. I can only hope it doesn't take too long to die of starvation." As long as you've got senses to engage and a brain to interpret them, your creativity is more like a well that fills up whenever you allow the rain to pour in (and let's face it, the only way for that not to happen is if you take steps to stop it getting in.)

Still not convinced? Okay then, let's imagine for a moment that you are one of those rarities that truly only does have one novel 'in you' and nothing more. Is that such a terrible thing? You'd certainly be in good company. Among other famous authors who only ever published one novel are; Harper Lee, with To Kill A Mockingbird, (although the world is currently aflame with rumours about a second one about to be published, some fifty-five years later) Emily Bronte with Wuthering Heights, Oscar Wilde with The Picture of Dorian Gray, Margaret Mitchell with Gone With The Wind, Boris Pasternak with Dr Zhivago, Anna Sewell with Black Beauty...

Would the literary world have been better off if they'd not bothered to finish those novels, just because they didn't go on to write any more after that?

4 - "It's taking too long! You're not writing fast enough for long enough! Your word count is pitiful! You'll be a-hundred-and-ninety-three before you ever finish this novel - hell, you'll probably die before you finish it!"
You've seen those books on Amazon too, admit it  - 'How to Write 2,000 Words an Hour and Pump Out a Book Every Thirty Days and be a Stinking Rich Kindle Millionaire Woohoo Bring on the Wonga!' And I'm not about to laugh in the faces of such books and say it's all a pack of lies. Some people do, in fact, write at least 2,000 words an hour and a book every thirty days (although in fairness, most of them are the authors of those types of books.) James Patterson seems to bring out a new novel roughly every two-and-half minutes, but that's because he has an entire army of ghostwriters in a magical fortress somewhere, who each take an outline he dashes off in a day or so and then beaver away at writing the books that he no doubt edits a bit before getting them published under his 'brand name.' (Harsh? Perhaps, but unless he actually went out and kidnapped those writers and keeps them manacled by their ankles to a desk, releasing them only for meals, sleep and toilet breaks I can't really diss him too much for having a factory-production-line approach to novel writing. I just hope he's paying them well for it and they genuinely don't mind not receiving much credit for their efforts... but even if that's not the case, I'm assuming they still have the choice to break away and strike out on their own.)

Some people can be full-time writers, some can only be part-time writers, and some have to squeeze in precious writing time between a gazillion other commitments. That will have some bearing on how quickly (or not) a writer can progress with their novels. Some writers are fantastically prolific: the mystery author John Creasey wrote six hundred novels in his lifetime, romance author Barbara Cartland wrote seven-hundred-and twenty-three and childrens' author Enid Blyton wrote over eight-hundred. (I'll let you have a moment for your mind to boggle.)

And then we have James Joyce, author of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. His average wordcount was widely rumoured to be six words a day (I don't know about you, but that makes me feel like a writing machine by comparison.) George R.R. Martin has also been accused of being a slow writer (albeit mainly by fans desperate for the next instalment in his Game of Thrones series) along with J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Crichton. All of which suggests that there's room for tortoises as well as hares in the writing world.

The point is, whether you write for eight hours a day or two hours a day (mine is the latter) you can only write what you write in that time. As long as that's what you do for at least the majority of your allotted time - as opposed to checking your emails, surfing the web or sneaking off to watch Bargain Hunt and claiming it was 'for research' - there's not much more you can do. No honestly, there really isn't. I know all those books claim everyone can write 2,000 words a day if they put their mind to it - but what those books don't tell you is that anything between 300-1800 of those words will be utter drivel that you'll end up deleting anyway. Some of us know that already, and simply don't allow the drivel to make it onto the page in the first place. That's what reduces the wordcount for us.

By all means measure your progress - I use an Excel spreadsheet to mark in how many hours a week I spent writing and my wordcount at the end of each 'session.' That's a brilliant thing to do to keep yourself on track and strengthen your commitment to finishing your novel, because it puts you in the mindset of treating your writing like a job that you 'clock in' for. It's also the best way to work out exactly how much you are capable of producing in the time you have available; a few months of  tracking your wordcount-per-time-allotted will give you an average that's realistic and achievable for you. This will help you when it comes to writing towards deadlines - whether self-imposed or set by external sources - because you'll know if you're likely to meet it, and how much more time to negotiate for if you're not.

If you can improve on your wordcount over time - fantastic! But if you can't... accept it and don't use it like a measuring stick to hold up against other writers and then beat yourself over the head with. Forget about what everyone else is doing - you are you. And if you're more James Joyce than Enid Blyton... that's okay, it really is.

Well, those are my big Grinch Moans... what are yours? Are there things I've missed? I'd love to know.

What Keeps You Writing..?

To any Writer With A Capital W, the above looks like a very simple question with an equally simple answer. We keep writing because we have to, because it’s what we were meant to do, because, if we stop writing for any period of time, we actually get cranky and more than a little bit cheesed off with our lives, the world and… well, existence in general.

In that sense, it’s like choosing a career path; starting at intern and working your way up the medical profession to become a respected consultant, for example. You have to be a certain kind of person with certain particular qualities to not only want to go in that direction, but to keep wanting it as you rise up the ranks and then continue to enjoy it once you've got there. It’s definitely not for everyone, but the ones it is for have the same passion for it as a Writer (with a capital W) has for writing.

But that’s not what I mean with this question; I'm going deeper than that. Three levels deeper, actually. So let’s take them one at a time…

Level One: What keeps you writing what you write?

For those of you out there making a living from what you write already this is obviously a no-brainer – it’s what pays my bills, dear. You know what you do works for that purpose, so you carry on doing it so you can… afford to carry on doing it. The Circle of Life! (Well, at the very least the circle of making a mostly enjoyable living, I would hope.) For you guys, that carrot is a real one, and you know it’s real because when you’ve reached out for it in the past you were able to grab it and take it.

Unlike the yet-to-be-published writer, who can only hope the carrot they’re reaching for isn’t just a fanciful illusion that exists only in their yearning writer’s imagination. What keeps you yet-to-be-published writers chasing that carrot, pushing through that nagging fear that it’s not really there at all?

I’ll use myself as an example, purely because I’m here now and ready to answer any questions I might ask me. My ‘area’ in the past was song lyrics – for straight-up commercial songs, for two full-length musicals and a lot of parody lyrics. That’s where the bulk of my writing experience lies, while Redemption is and will be my first completed novel. It’s a hell of a switch –  in terms of genre, expected writing style, size of finished work… just about everything really. Who’s to say that, just because I’ve had some success writing lyrics, I’m also capable of writing a decent novel? Ultimately, for all the effort I’m putting into it, I might suck as a novelist.

I can write lyrics for a complete song, start to finish, in two hours if I put my mind to it (and my personal best is twenty minutes – but that was a really good day…) So the idea of spending more than two years now on one project is… well, it’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Jeez, no wonder I’ve worried about being crap at it! Why am I making life so hard for myself? I could just go back to writing lyrics instead – stick to what I know, and cherish that feeling of finishing something without watching entire birthdays fly by…

But for some reason I can’t. I’m still hell-bent on completing my novel, scene by scene, chapter by chapter – even though the process seems so agonizingly s-l-o-w compared to writing lyrics. What the heck is driving me? What is that intangible thing that keeps any aspiring-to-be-published-writer plodding down the road towards that carrot-that-may-be-just-a-mirage on the horizon?

Level Two: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing?

This relates not just to the fact that you’re writing a novel, but that you’re writing that novel. You’re investing a heck of a lot of time and effort into this one story burning a fire in your brain that ultimately… people might never bother to read. Or all the ones that do read it don’t like it -- hate it even, to the point where they vow never to read anything else written by you ever again. That thing you just spent ages toiling and sweating over? It was a bad idea, chum. Should’ve gone with something else entirely.

Ouch. Now they tell ya’…

I know many writers (including myself) talk about these stories as being tales they have to tell, that almost have to be extracted from their minds and released into the world before they can sleep normally and carry on with their lives. They even say things like “I don’t care if it never gets published or no-one ever reads it, I'm still going to finish it because I have to” (I know that, because I've said it myself, about Redemption.)

It’s easy to motivate yourself into writing something that’s guaranteed to work out just fine. But what about that thing that “will probably never get published, because no first novel is ever good enough to get published...”? How do you make yourself believe that’s still worth slogging your guts over? I suppose the argument is that you can’t write the novel that will get published until you've written all the ones that won’t first – but that’s like telling a kid if he doesn't keep eating all those Brussel sprouts he’ll never get to eat the ice-cream… someday. Sooner or later most kids just say “Y’know what? I don’t want the ice-cream that much anyway.” And stop eating their sprouts. But what about the ones who don’t? What is that magical thing that keeps them shovelling down the sprouts?

Level Three: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing… when you’re getting sick to death of trying to write it?

Okay, so you've got through levels one and two – but this one’s the real toughie. Because this level happens even with the stories you’re most in love with and most desperate to tell. All of us writer-types are in on this secret; writing a labour of love is a roller-coaster ride, and on the downward-sloping parts even trying to put one sentence in front of the other – without the results looking like the work of a monkey after a bottle of Jack Daniels and a spliff – is harder than sucking porridge through a straw. That’s when your Inner Grinch pops up, and tells you there’s only one reason it’s suddenly become so hard; it’s because this story sucks, and you suck too… and y’know what? You’re probably always going to suck, because you’ll never get past writing stuff that sucks because you know you suck soooo much…

(Or is that just me? Not that I’d wish it on anyone else of course, but I’m kind of hoping it’s not…)

This level is the reason I – and probably a gazillion other writers out there – have a Novel Graveyard somewhere on their hard drive. And a secret pile of half-filled, handwritten notebooks in a musty-smelling cardboard box in the loft. All of them containing stories that begin full of fire and promise, before slowly petering out and being left to die in the pit of their own loneliness somewhere around Chapter Four. Maybe they really were stories that were never meant to be… but even if they were, ultimately the Grinch won.

Redemption is the first novel that my Grinch has thus far been unable to kill. I finished – actually finished! – its Draft One, and, even though it’s been hard going, I am still squirreling my way through Draft Two. And I am in no mood to give up on it – someone or something will literally have to kill me to make me do that. My Grinch has still been making regular appearances, acid-raining on my parade with the schadenfreude of all his previous attempts. And, in low moments, I still listen to him and feel sad and hopeless for a while. But then I punch him in the face (metaphorically of course) and carry on writing. What’s changed this time around? What is it about this story that’s making me believe in it so deeply, where I didn't or couldn't believe in the ones I attempted before? What is that special ‘thing’ in every writer’s first completed novel that kept them believing this was the one they should put a ring on?

Why am I even asking these questions anyway? It’s certainly not because I know the answers (sorry if that’s what you were hoping.) To be honest I wouldn't even know where to begin. Maybe it’s better not to have a definitive answer anyway. Sometimes analysing something too deeply is the surest way to kill it – in the same way the Victorians thought knowing how butterflies lived required chloroforming them and sticking their corpses on pins.  Or maybe it’s just something that can’t be defined by some sort of formula for human behaviour – “So, you want to actually finish a novel? Try X + Y = screw you, Grinch!”

So I'm putting it out there because I'm wondering if any of you have any theories. I’d love to know, seriously. ‘Cause even if we don’t manage to come up with any answers, it’ll be nice to know if we’re doing similar sums to get there.

The Wall of Self-Doubt

It's official; Simon Cowell has come to visit my brain - and he's brought a bloody great pile of suitcases with him. For the purpose of progressing with my writing, this is Bad News.

This week I finally trundled over the hill that is 50,000 words of Draft Two of The Renegades (now at 54,500 actually.) While I realise that, for the 'professional' novel writer, this ranks in terms of achievement roughly equivalent to getting up in the morning, for me this is a big deal. It's the furthest down the novel-writing road that I've ever travelled. So right now I should be doing The Carlton Dance while simultaneously trying to high-five myself, right?

Mmmmm... yeah, not so much, as it turns out.

I've seen all those talent shows Mr. Cowell has created. The ones where some people - not all, but definitely some - strut in front of him, brimming with the confidence of their own awesomeness, and then indulge in the most godawful spectacle of self-delusion a human could inflict on three minutes of other humans' lives. And when Simon systematically (and some might say, for the sake of humanity) tears their performance to pieces, they stand there wide-eyed and uncomprehending, as if they're not quite sure if they're dreaming all of this.

"He surely can't be serious, can he? He can't possibly be saying that about what I just did - it's obvious I am the most freakin' amazing bucketful of sheer, raw talent he's ever seen... "

Whatever they're hearing when they open their mouths and make sounds come out, it sure as hell can't be what everyone else hears. And they believe in their own hype too; like conspiracy theorists, there is no logical argument you can present to them to sway them from their conviction that they are fabulous and all the naysayers are just insanely jealous...

By the same logic, I could well be the writerly equivalent of those people. And, like them, I wouldn't even know it either.

Since I passed the 50,000 words mark of The Renegades Draft Two, more and more often I've found myself thinking "what if this really is just a gigantic pile of suck? I might think it's coming together okay, and that it makes sense and I've come a long way as a writer because of it - but what if I'm deluding myself? What if, when I've finally finished this thing, it becomes the solid, cast-iron proof that I'm actually a terrible writer who'll never get any of her novels published ever because every novel she writes is a steaming mound of horse-poo?" And then the Simon Cowell currently squatting in my brain does That Face at me, which really doesn't help.

Apparently this is what's known as A Typical Thing among writers. Apparently Number Two: I'm even  having this Typical Thing at a Typical Stage of the Writing Process. The Fear of Being Judged is tiptoeing away from the cozy sanctuary of fantasy and edging ever closer to becoming kick-in-the-guts reality. And yeah, it's blimmin' scary. After all, just because I've gone through large portions of my life expecting to be told I suck doesn't mean I learned to like it at any point...

But other writers have got past this. They've admitted that they too hit the wall of self-doubt - but they just kept on going anyway, until they got published... and then they kept on writing more stuff after that. If I'm not willing to let my novels be judged, I'm never going to finish writing one; I already know that's true from the stacks of half-finished and just-begun attempts languishing in W-I-P Hell on my hard drive. My personal Brain Simon may be right; in the end, even after a metric tonne of rewrites and polishes, The Renegades might turn out to be a legless donkey. And I'm sure, if that's the case, it'll hurt when I actually hear people tell me so.

But... it's a bit of a First-World Problem really, isn't it? There are worse things that could happen. The Fear of Being Crap is a powerful thing, but many of my fellow writers (god bless 'em) have assured me that not only can it be beaten, it must be. I've got through it with writing lyrics, and I've got through it with writing short stories - now I have to suck it up and deal with it when it comes to writing novels.

Does it end? Is this just a phase every writer goes through at a certain stage in a novel's lifecycle, until they come out the other side and say "Hell yeah, let's start submitting/self-publishing this puppy?" Or is it one of those things that pops up on a regular basis to mess with your head - like PMS, but with less chocolate consumption? (Ohh.... alright then, in my case, roughly the same amount of chocolate consumption...)

Perhaps I should just get myself a t-shirt with "I'm having a Mid-Write Crisis!" printed on it.

Life: Too Short for Regrets, But Long Enough To Be A Writer

I had another birthday last week (and no, you're not getting a number out of me.) I'm reasonably sure I'm still only having the requisite one a year, but sometimes it feels like more; I know there's a sad part of my brain that's still clinging to the fantasy of being thirty, and reality is starting to seriously mess with that now.

I was a writer before I could actually write; by the time I was three I was apparently filling sheets of paper with rows of  meaningless squiggly lines and telling anyone who'd listen that I was "whiting a storwee." At the age of seven I made my first, proper book, with sheets of paper folded in half and stapled through the middle, that had not only a story with real, readable words in but pictures as well. I don't remember much about it, except that it was a shamelessly plagiarized hybrid of Louisa M.Alcott's 'Little Women' and whatever random Famous Five book I'd recently read (and yeah, it probably was as dreadful as it sounds.) Over the next few years I won some storywriting competitions and a playwriting competition twice in a row. It looked very much like writing was going to be My Thing when I grew up.

When I first read Stephen King's book 'On Writing,' it struck me that, even though I'm almost twenty years younger than him, I caught the writing bug at a much earlier age than he did. He's since done pretty darn well for himself, selling gazillions of novels all over the world and acquiring a devoted fanbase the size of a small planet. Whereas I... well, I won't compare my achievements to his, if it's all the same to you - I don't need that kind of kick in the self-esteem nuts, thanks.

Now I'm not begrudging Mr King one ounce of his success; it's very clear from his book that he worked his ass off to get where he's got, and everything he's achieved is down to putting in the graft and never giving up. But, aside from also being ridiculously talented with a healthy amount of self-belief, this is precisely why he's achieved everything he has and... I haven't.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not so arrogant as to think that's all it would take for me to be as successful and revered as him - I'm highly unlikely to reach those heights no matter how much graft I put in. But I do know that now I'd be further along the path to my own level of success if I'd followed his example. He applied bum to chair and churned out those words every single day - even when it was hard, even when it was the last thing he felt like doing - and never letting anything in his life stand in the way or distract him from his goal.

And I didn't. I let everything get in the way; work, relationships, mental dipshittery... you name it. I only wrote when I wanted to write, when I was 'in the mood' to write - when writing was an exciting, considerate lover that got my mojo revving and made me feel good. Which was nowhere near often enough. Writing when it's fun is easy; it's writing when it's hell on earth that sorts the Michelin-starred from the McDonalds Happy Meals. I wish I'd learned that some twenty years earlier.

And it became obvious to me this week, after speaking to several 'older' writer friends, that I'm not the only one feeling this way. All of us mourn our lost opportunities; so many wasted years, missed chances, if only if only, what have I done with my life..? And now, with the free-for-all that is digital self-publishing, it's hard not to look at all these self-pub authors half our age churning out books by the bucketload - and feel like hopeless slackers by comparison. We've already lost the race... and now maybe we're too old and knackered to ever shamble across that finish line?

It's all right for the likes of Edith Piaf, singing "non, je ne regrette rien" - at least she got a hit record out of it. For the rest of us though, it's hard not to count up all those 'wasted' years and think of ourselves as failing somehow. But we're forgetting something; during all those 'wasted' years we may not have been banging out literary masterpieces... but we were doing something equally valuable in the quest to become better writers...

We were living our lives. Filling them with the richness of experiences - of other people, places, professions, cultures, lifestyles - everything. All manner of things that can't be learned from a How-To book or any number of creative writing courses. And all things that add depth and meaning to whatever we choose to write now, when we've looked back over them and turned them around in our more mature minds and made new sense of them.

If you wanted to be an Olympic athlete or a glamour model... well yeah, those are career choices that have a limited age span. But writing isn't. Many of our best-loved authors didn't achieve success until they were well into their forties and fifties - and 'The Camomile Lawn' novelist Mary Wesley was 71 by the time she was first published. You're never 'too old' to be a writer! As long as you can still hold a pen, bash a keyboard or talk to someone else who can (Barbara Cartland dictated all her novels to her PA in the latter years of her career) you can still produce the goods. Time hasn't run out for you - time's only just beginning!

So, if you only started 'taking your writing seriously' at a later stage in your life, maybe there's a very good reason. Maybe you just needed to come to it when you were ready. And there's no shame in how long it takes to do that; some writers are minute steaks, others are pot roasts. Both are equally delicious - but only if they're cooked in the right way, for the right amount of time. Be proud to be a pot roast if that's what you are, because even the best minute steak in the world can never taste like you.

When Statistics Tell You Your Firstborn Will Be Ugly

Don't worry - I'm talking novels here, not beloved children.

Y'see, I've been reading the wise words of many different authors this week, and detected something of a theme going on. Lots of them have talked about how hard it is to become a published author, and that it takes long years of slog and learning at the coalface before you finally get that big break. Writing novels for a living should never be considered a ticket to easy street, they say; even with the advent of e-publishing, it's by no means a get-rich-quick scheme. It's hard, slow, backbreaking work, and you've gotta be in it for the long haul to even have a sniff at winning it...

All of which I... kind of already knew. I read those words nodding my head in agreement and not feeling at all like my dreams had been stomped on. The fact that I'm now forty-mumble (and due to be forty-mumble-and-another-year in about a month from now) is proof enough that I was never destined to be an 'overnight success,' and I've reached the point where I'm reasonably cool with the idea that I'm more of a tortoise than a hare.

But then came the twist in the tale; many of these authors also went on to say that they didn't get the first novel they ever wrote published at all. For many it was their third, fourth or fifth book that became their 'debut' - for some it was more like their eighth or tenth. In short, the general consensus among a wide circle of writers across all the genres was that first novels were simply never good enough to publish; it just didn't happen in the Real World.

Of course I'd heard that said before too - but only once or twice, by a couple of authors I'd never heard of at the time anyway. And that was way before I made a serious, focused commitment to writing novels myself (as opposed to the multitude of half-assed, un-focused attempts in between writing scripts and lyrics that peppered my writing history up until that point.) But now here were enough voices to transform these words from a minority viewpoint into... an actual, measurable statistic.

A statistic that clearly indicates my current work-in-progress, The Renegades, is destined to end up consigned to the Writer's Bottom Drawer of Shame without ever being seen or read by anyone except the publishers and agents who reject it. Yeah, y'know - that novel that's already taken me nearly two years to write, and will probably take me another two years to edit and polish to a standard I'm happy with.

Whoa.

That's how to pee on someone's parade.

While I'm hardly knocking on the door of my local nursing home just yet, I aint no spring chicken either. What if I finish The Renegades, fail to get it published and then promptly die before I can start on the next one? What if inspiration deserts me forever after writing the Renegades, because that's the only book that was in me all along? What if a global apocalypse of some kind hits, transforming the world as we know it into a dystopian nightmare where novels have no use except as kindling for campfires in the rubble of civilization, and novel-writers are hunted down and eaten by starving illiterates... well, okay, that last one probably won't happen, but you know what I mean...

Whenever the going's got tough on The Renegades, one thing I've been telling myself in order to keep making me attach bum to chair and fingers to keyboard is that this novel will be worth completing, and that the more care and attention I lavish on it, the better it will turn out to be in the end. Now, if the words of all these writers are true, I'm supposed to accept that, no matter what I do and how hard I work on it, it will nonetheless be irredeemably unpublishable. And that's before I've even finished it. It's tempting then, isn't it, to ask that fatal question: is it even worth carrying on with it when it's - apparently - a steaming pile of puppy-poo?

I've thought about that question long and hard over the last couple of days. And the conclusion I've reached is: yes, it bloody well is.

For starters, I made a commitment to this novel. Without wanting to sound like a total fruitcake (but probably failing - I can live with that...) now that I've created these characters and put them in this messed-up situation, I kind of owe them the chance to live their way through it and tell their story - if not to Joe Public, then at least to me.

Secondly, a large part of writing this novel has been taken up with learning how to write this novel; I've always been the kind of person who learns by trying, cocking it up and then trying again, rather than just obediently absorbing instructions. This one's already taught me so much, and I'm convinced it's not done with me yet. If I don't finish the coursework, I don't graduate. And I want to graduate.

But even if that wasn't enough to convince me, here's the jam in the doughnut: even if I were to abandon this novel... I'd soon be starting on another one. And then that one would become my new 'first novel' - to be inevitably rejected and unpublished... If publishing a novel is what I want to do (and it is) there's no way of getting out of writing a first novel - any more than I could get out of cutting my first tooth or taking my first steps as a baby. Like cutting my first tooth, it's probably going to hurt - and like taking those first steps, I'm probably going to faceplant a few times. Maybe a lot of times. But if I'd given up on learning to walk I'd be a forty-mumble-year-old lying on her belly on the carpet right now. And that'd be kind of embarrassing.

For all I know, I may never earn the right to call myself a Published Novelist. But as long as I keep on trying I can call myself a writer. And that will always feel good.