Five Years and Three Drafts
—and I am still asking the same questions about my novel
What is my main character’s desire?
How is this different from what they really need?
What limited perception of the world informs their desire?
How will its pursuit play out to drive the action of the story?
These are basic, essential story questions.
I can’t believe I am asking them at this point in the game. After having written four previous novels, I feel like a complete idiot who has no idea how to write a book.
Here’s what I’ve been hearing from my inner critic.
Or, as I sometimes call it—to defuse some of the harsh effects of its self-flagellation—my inner chicken.
Normal writers ask—and answer!—these questions before ever setting pen to page, not after writing what probably amounts to 200K words and throwing away two thirds of them.
Normal writers know what their books are about and can articulate the premise clearly, in a few sentences, to anyone who asks.
Normal writers write 1) a shitty first draft, 2) a more polished draft to share for feedback, 3) a draft incorporating feedback, 4) a final draft. The final draft improves on 1, 2, and 3 but doesn’t recreate itself as an almost completely new story that bears only a ghostly relationship to Draft 1.
Normal writers don’t confuse themselves every time they dive into story questions.
Normal writers remember what they have put on the page and what they need to add or remove so the story makes sense to readers.
Normal writers….
Oh shut the f*** up already!'
The truth is that I am a normal writer.
Everything I am experiencing is completely within the realm of the expected when one is constructing a story.
Why would we think that creating an entire world from nothing would be easy? (Just because God apparently did it in a week and even got a bonus day of rest.) That imagining ourselves into the skins of others would be as simple as slipping on a new outfit? That seeking an elusive truth we know hides within the patterns of our words would be a pleasant skip down a garden path?
Here’s what I have to say back to my inner critic.
Take your “normal” and go home.
Leave me to marinate in the delicious stew of my complicated characters. If you want to write something simple and unchallenging that follows a formula, you go right ahead. If you want to bore yourself with tired themes and simplistic renderings of a fictional world, be my guest.
I love my characters. And I plan to stick with them for as long as it takes. I choose the path of most resistance—which also turns out to be the path of greatest meaning and satisfaction.
What’s your relationship with the doubting internal voices that want to shame you into giving up?
I know many in our community are working on multi-year projects, both fiction and non-fiction. My hope is that normalizing these thoughts and experiences will add fuel to the fire of your commitment.
Transform your true and tender stories
With Jennifer’s popular online Telling The Truth Through Fiction one-hour workshop.
Monday, March 11, 2024 | 7-8am PST | 10am-12pm EST
Online via Zoom through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
OLLI at BCC Members: $15 | Non-members: $20
Join Jennifer for an online workshop exploring how sometimes telling the truth is easier in fiction than in memoir. The workshop will include instruction and writing exercises/prompts. As Jennifer wrote in a recent essay:
When we shift purposefully from memoir to fiction, we not only do no harm to the still-living people who inhabit our memories, but we also ignite the process of transforming the coal of true but painful stories into diamonds that can shine a bright light for ourselves, and for others.
If you have some tender true stories in mind that you're not sure how to tell, this workshop is for you!
 | A guest post by
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Oh, Audrey, I love your "normal writers" list. I'm write there with you — horrible pun included. When it comes to self-doubt, I hear, "Tim, who are you to write about ...." I allow myself to consider that for a bit, but have learned to answer that question with another: "Tim, who are you NOT to write about ...?" or "Tim, why NOT you?" Once I challenge the self-doubting voice, the other one, the authentic one, speaks. Over time, the authentic voice is gaining confidence and the self-doubting one is growing tired of itself.
This is ansolutely great, Audrey, and not only true about fiction. Ask Jennifer how I keep agitating for help getting the form figured out. Ha!! Stay with it, stay ironice and cheerful, and remind yourself,in some obscure way the whole process is teaching you exactly what you need to learn now! Or so it has been for me...I'm beginning to see, memoir has a lot of the same issues...except guess who the main character(s) is?? Catching up with myself on the page is a major task...be well!