A Writer's Journey

Two Summers ago, I took a novel writing course. I thought it’d be fun to get an idea I had in my mind on paper. But looking back, I might’ve been too cocky in my writing capabilities. And with my skills sharpened in the years since, it’s time to revisit that.

Can I write a story? Well…kinda. It’s easy to second-guess my talents, and Imposter Syndrome’s real, but having a story to tell and knowing how to write it aren’t one-in-the-same. Or, rather, the latter ties with the former, but not the reverse. It’s weird saying that, as novels are stories, but you can have a story and not know how to tell it. Believe me, that’s an art on its own.

Writing requires patience. It demands setting aside time on something that may or may not be any good. You can’t devote a few minutes here and there to it, because that’s too easy. You need to chunk off time in your schedule, sit your keister down and do the work. It’s not gonna write itself!

That much I have down. I’m an anxious guy with OCD, so staying course on stuff I care about has never been a challenge. I usually churn out pieces for The Whitly-Verse in about 3-4 hours, sometimes quicker. So me devoting time to my stories is easy. 

What isn’t easy, however, is everything else. Let’s be clear: writing a novel is hard work. And it’s not always fun, either. You have to think about what you want to say. You have to decide how to say it, be it in a diary format, as a neutral observer, or a hybrid. And you have to understand the language of novel writing. I don’t mean “be fluent in a language”, either.

Perhaps this is best illustrated through something I didn’t grasp immediately: immersion. And by that, I’m referring to building a world by engaging the senses. It’s not enough to be visual, that’s basic and limiting. You need to hear, smell, touch and taste the worlds you create. It sounds strange, but here’s an example of how not to do that:

“He could see that she was in distress, and wanted to comfort her. But he couldn’t.”

That’s a lot more simplistic than:

“He could see the pain she was in, and the agony of her torture. Her eyes showed the intensity of the situation, and the way she whined and wailed made a chill crawl down his spine. The pheromones of fear filled the air, and the beads of sweat down her forehead were noticeable. She was paralyzed with fear, and he wanted to help. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t know why.”

That’s relatively basic, by the way. But it’s more effective because it engages the senses. It still has the visual component, but there’s also sound and feeling. Even smell is utilized.

I wish I’d known this going in. I spent so much time on my argumentative skills in high school and university, but I never actually grasped my novel writing skills. I could’ve taken a creative writing course in hindsight, as my alma mater offered them, but I was too busy trying to pass. In hindsight, that was a mistake.

This ties in with “being patient”. It’s not enough to say what happened, you also need to feel it. If I’d known that initially, I’d have gotten further and far fewer rejections from publishers, whom I arrogantly assumed would publish my rough and unpolished piece.

There’s another aspect I didn’t understand: I wasn’t ready. But how could I have known that? No one tells you that multiple drafts and rewrites are necessary for your piece to be ready for an agent, let-alone a publisher. And even then, it’s a struggle. That I naively thought this’d be a piece of cake was a red flag.

But that’s what happens. You need to experience heartache and rejection many times, or you’ll never get anywhere. And you need to not take it too personally. It’s like YouTube video essayist Movies With Mikey said: no one knows what they’re doing. It’s true.

There are other side-lessons that I should’ve known. Like how even with language being limiting, you still need to utilize it. Or how listening to marginalized groups is essential for honest storytelling, even if “their job isn’t to educate you”. Or how brushing criticism off in a rude manner is bad. Or even how, if all else fails, Google’s your friend.

This is stuff I wish I’d known. True, I had the basics down, like structure and story flow. However, utilizing senses and showing my writing? Not even close. Or when I did that, sometimes I’d overwrite, a problem I still face now.

So how did I combat my lack of knowledge? By educating myself. I signed up for Masterclass lessons with Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman. I read authors like Anne Lamott. I joined a group called “So You Want to Write?”, where I had my writing critiqued by strangers. I even signed up for 12-week classes with an agent and several other classmates. Most of this cost money, and I had to make sacrifices financially. But I did it, and I don’t regret it for a second.

This is all advice that 30 year-old me could’ve appreciated more. If the last two years taught me anything, it’s that I have potential to write stories. Maybe not be great ones, but it’s there. And if I can polish the skills I always suspected I had, but wasn’t sure were there, then everyone else can too.