This week in Behind Your Creative Life, we look at how you can give yourself the best possible chance of writing and finishing a novel – by avoiding this one mistake.
WRITING YOUR FIRST NOVEL?
DON’T MAKE THIS MISTAKE.
One of the biggest mistakes I see new or aspiring writers make happens before they even pick up the pen. In fact, the reason I warn against this is that it stops a person picking up a pen at all. And it has nothing to do with watching TV or playing computer games instead. (Though those won’t get you to your goal either.)
What do I see some beginners do that harms their dream of being a writer before they even begin?
They tell others about their novel ideas, the world they’ve created, or describe the book they’re writing.
Sounds innocent, right? And maybe even helpful? But I’m going to explain why it works against you.
I once knew a guy who had one of the most detailed and well-crafted world ideas for a fantasy series. Maps, sketches, lands, races, characters – all named and fleshed out. Years of meticulous work.
How do I know?
He told everyone about it.
And other people told more people about it, because it all sounded so good. People genuinely used to talk about this world as if it were a book written. And so did he.
Twenty-plus years later, however, he still hadn’t written a single page of the book or series he longed to write. Every time he sat down to write, nothing happened. He once asked me what to do about it, and I gave him the advice: stop telling everyone about your book.
You see – and this is key – the brain, on some levels, doesn’t really know the difference between you telling someone the details of the story and you writing the story. Especially when it comes to the reward centre of the brain.
What that means is: when you sit down to write, the brain thinks it’s already written.
It’s no longer like writing and discovering the story; it’s like rewriting the story, and that requires a whole level of skill and determination and fortitude that beginners don’t yet have. That kind of skill – the ability to rewrite from scratch an entire novel – comes from years of sitting down and practising and learning the hard graft of editing and reworking. And when you first write a story, you don’t want to be pushing through at that level. You just want the creative high that comes from getting that story down.
The other reason that writers who talk first, write second, struggle to get their books down is that they are missing one of the best incentives and internal motivation tools for getting that novel down: the big reveal!
I have made a commitment to never talk about my novels to anyone unless they are finished – first draft finished. I just completed a six-book series – the first book will be released in the months ahead – and it took me fifteen years to finish the first draft. And believe me, I wanted to put it down many times, but I knew that meant no one would ever know about these books and their characters and stories. The secrecy, rather than making me feel isolated, was what kept me going. It’s like when you create a piece of art, or a special meal, or organise a surprise party, or make some craft – it is that moment you get to show the end result that is the most heavenly moment of all. It doesn’t work to reveal it or share it halfway through. It has not only lost its impact for the one you’re showing, but for you too.
I have learned through experience that when someone tells me about a book they plan to write one day, they are unlikely to finish or maybe even start that book – as sad as that fact is. The more they tell me and others, the less they will write.
I noticed this phenomenon very early in my career, long before studies* in neuroscience and psychology confirmed what I was seeing. I found that many aspiring writers approached me, having heard I was also a writer, and would share their story ideas. Then they would ask for advice on how to start writing. When I questioned them, they confessed to being stuck after writing more than a page or two or a chapter or two at best – a struggle that for some had persisted for years. No one cited lack of time, but rather a feeling of just being blocked.
I also experienced it firsthand.
I was working on a substantial fantasy series – one of the first major ideas I had. After I’d finished Book One – and while I was part of the way through Book Two – an agent, looking at it, wanted a full synopsis of everything that would happen in every book in the series. I had to write out in detail, every major event of the story. And because I had to present it to someone else, I had to work on it thoroughly to “sell” the story. In effect, I was telling the story before I’d even written it.
I sent off the synopsis, then sat down to continue with the next book in the series. And that’s when I hit a wall. I found myself unable to continue. Every time I sat down to write, I had that strong feeling that I’d already completed it. I recognised exactly what was going on. My brain was demanding to know why we were starting from scratch for something it had already done.
It took fifteen years before I was able to pick up that series again!
Fifteen years to even start from scratch and write it properly. I needed that much time to convince my brain that it was completely new, that it had never done it before. That’s the six-book series – called “The King’s Gambit” – that I am releasing soon. (Actually, it worked out in my favour because my original version was really quite bad and I couldn’t see it. But that’s a whole other story.)
I had a similar thing happen for Bloodline’s second book.
Originally Bloodline was one book, but the more I worked on it for publication, the more I “heard” echoes of an incomplete story in my head. So I wrote a ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of Book Two to show my writing consultant (i.e. Naomi), to see if it was worth expanding or if I should turn Bloodline back into one book.
She said a resolute yes to writing the second one. She told me that once she knew what was supposed to happen in Book Two, she couldn’t “unknow” it, so it needed to be written. (So if you don’t like the book, it’s her fault. 😉)
But after that, I didn’t so much write that book as rewrite it into being. I rewrote the book from start to finish over thirty times, and each time pulled out only the bits, scenes, or chapters that I thought worked, until over four long, laborious years later, I had a potential complete working draft that I could then edit and revise as my ‘beginning draft’.
Believe me when I tell you it was the hardest slog I’ve ever endured on a book project. I did not get that ‘creative high’ from writing the first draft that I got from all my other books. It was like wading through a mud-filled maze with a sack of bricks on my back, constantly trudging the same convoluted paths trying to find my way out, instead of entering the slipstream of energy-giving subconscious creativity.
So I know how hard it is, but back then I had the determination of experience, the energy of youth, and a waiting audience and publisher. But aspiring writers don’t have those kinds of internal tools and external obligations for overcoming the blocks that happen when you share a story too early.
Not everyone who talks first fails to finish. There are exceptions to everything, but why make the process harder than it already is? Why not give yourself the best possible chance of achieving your dream of finishing that novel?
If you want the best possible chance of starting and finishing a book, make a commitment: no one gets even a hint of your novel’s story, characters, world, or purpose – except maybe the genre – until the first draft is completed. The reward of being able to speak about it only after it is written is a powerful incentive to get your first, even your second and third drafts done.
A useful exception:
The exception to all of this is if you need help with the plotting or problems. If you genuinely need help with a novel as you go, there is a trick and some very important provisos.
Instead of verbally describing the story and asking for advice, show your advisor the manuscript if possible. Let them read it up until the issue. Or provide very brief chapter summaries. Then describe the problem – briefly – and discuss only the scene or issue in question.
But … make sure that person is someone who can overlook a rough draft. You want someone who isn’t going to point out your awkward sentences, phrasing and typos, and who you genuinely trust to understand plotting and problems. (For me, that person is Naomi.) If you start attacking the book at a line-edit level, your brain will shift from drafting mode into editing mode too soon. You need to keep it on a structural level.
Problem-solving with someone you trust is very different to telling someone enthusiastically all about your story. The brain knows that you’re still in the plotting and planning stage if you’re mulling over questions and problems. As much as you can, pose it as questions. “What if I …?” “Should I …?” “Did I…? That kind of thing. Keep the language you use very much in ‘creating and drafting’ mode.
You’ve listened to me ramble. Now it’s my turn to listen to you. I have a question for you:
I have more than twenty-five years of writing and editing experience – not only with my own novels, but professionally editing books, articles, magazines, fiction and non-fiction for others. In particular, I have been what I call a Book Doctor for many novels and non-fiction books, editing, sculpting and problem-solving books at whatever level they required.
I’m in a different phase of life now, so I no longer do that work professionally outside of family, but the knowledge is all still there.
Would you like more novel-writing tips, editing advice, or creative writing posts? I would love to share some of what I’ve learned, including the sort of advice I rarely see discussed – a bit like this week’s post – but only if it’s useful to you. Let me know in the comments below.
One more thing:
Naomi and I have started giving away freebies with some posts, and when we discussed what would work for this week’s freebie, the idea of a writing prompt pack came to us. A little help and some inspiration for getting words on a page. You can read about it and join in here.
*A note on the psychology behind this: This advice is rooted in long experience, but it also lines up with research into symbolic self-completion theory, the intention-behaviour gap, public goal disclosure, substitute activities, brain scans in readers and writers, and the way dopamine through early social reward can affect motivation. If you’re interested, there is a wealth of studies on the subject. For example, Peter Gollwitzer’s landmark study in 2009 on Identity-Related Goals. Or Kurt Lewin and Wera Mahler’s research (1933) into the effects of premature and effortless psychological rewards (such as telling friends and colleagues about your book’s plot). Or Wicklund & Gollwitzer’s work on Symbolic Self-Completion Theory. And then there are the growing studies into neuroscience showing how the brain lights up when writing, telling, reading or hearing a story. Or parallel studies showing how even just visualising things like practising kicking a ball or playing piano can improve your skills, muscle tone, and neural pathways as if you did practise – showing the fine line between reality and perception in the subconscious brain.
About the Author: Lisa Saul
Pinterest
YouTube
