A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Novel
I started watching movies
In my second failed novel, the daughter of the protagonist’s lover was an unruly teenager named Valentine. No writer has to read that sentence twice to twig why the novel was doomed (distracting tertiary characters; digressive capillary plot lines), but in my faint defense you ought to know she stole every scene she was in, no matter how many outlines I wrote about her mother.
I say second novel. The first novel finished in worse shape. Editors and writing teachers like to say that wretched first attempts are valuable experiences. The ideas in mine still seed my imagination. It’s more useful to me in its overwrought, irretrievable mess than it could ever have been as a published work.
The failure of the second, I did not take with this equanimity. It caused me a total meltdown.
Nobody had to tell me that novel was bad.
After working diligently around earning a living, “showing up” daily for several years, I had arrived at a dead end. I began to take the novel apart in the recommended fashion—removing everything that wasn’t central, getting a clean through-line, a tighter story. When I did this, the novel did not get better. It ceased to exist. Had I merely gone too far? Removed something essential? I couldn’t see what to do.
For a while I wrote short stories, got my foot in the door with a respected small prize, and published half a dozen works. I was miserable. The work did not get better. The stories were not improving.
The surest way to do well and interest readers, I was told, was to write diaristic stories of a struggle for identity, the journey of overcoming violence and poverty, all of which it was pointed out to me, I had in spades. One of my mentors said I should never write about anything else. A well-known British writer praised my “voice,” telling me I was fortunate since “voice is one of those things that can’t be taught.” A poet laureate strongly advised that I develop my work in the direction of spiritual autobiography.
All of this made me despondent.
I quit writing fiction. I tried a year of biography, then several years of poetry. Then Covid hit. I was busy keeping my family’s life on the rails. Amid living in an apartment with no pipes in it, I wrote a third, very bad novel.
At this, defeat finally got to me. I wanted very much to admit that I’m just not a writer. I had plenty of evidence. I said it out loud. I wrote notes to myself. But it simply didn’t feel true. I began again, this time electing to work with an editor earlier in the process.
Purveyors of hope and self-improvement often trot out a mangled appropriation of enlightenment. A dedicated student keeps the faith through myriad trials and abuse, believing that with enough patience their ego will dissolve. The Master treats the student with unrelenting contempt. One day they suddenly hit the student across the face with their sandal. The shock produces a flash of understanding.
Maybe focused practices all come down to the same thing. I wasn’t comfortable failing, but I had allowed myself to think of myself as fated to it. Sooner or later whatever was standing on my neck would reward me; all I had to do was work harder and with more heart. Right? Right? Oh yes, the creative writing coaches nodded. Plus, you know, “your writing is so beautiful.”
So although I tried to “face facts” and see myself differently, still I’ve never had a gut feeling that I should give up. The enlightenment story is just CYA, because my real reasons for sticking had nothing to do with worthiness, showing my mettle, or even a “life-long dream.” The truth is I can’t explain it. If I was going to get any sandal in the face it was as Keep It Simple as that. I keep writing because I want to.
The editor was harsh about the incipient fourth novel. It was clear to him I hadn’t learned a thing writing the first three. I endured a tongue-lashing in a writing group with him more humiliating than any in my life. And yet.
There was an actual flash of understanding.
Hours after the flogging, I was resolutely chewing over my work, patting myself down for the beginner’s mind thing. Re-reading my workshop submission for the seventy-fifth time, it hit me. Not like a blow to the head, but definitely like a light going on.
I realized I had no idea how to tell a story.
It was obvious. I literally felt so stupid. And I do not know why, but relieved. Probably because I took it to mean I was going to be allowed to stay in the room.
Yes, there were other problems, I had habits to address, and lapses of judgement, but I wasn’t bad at writing. However, I was totally incompetent at telling a story. To some degree I didn’t know what story I was trying to tell (though I’d often been encouraged that I could write my way to knowing-) but worse, even when I did know, I didn’t put it on the page.
Astonished, I rifled through my work—manila folders of drafts where words and sentences loitered without purpose in plain view. It dawned on me that if I had not discovered my delinquency, it would not have mattered how hard I worked or how much my heart was in it, not in a million years. Pages upon pages of writing and rewriting contained not a stick of structure. Intriguing dialogue, yes; indelible images, check. Storytelling, negativo.
It called to mind (forgive me) Steve Jobs’ admonition that design isn’t aesthetics, design is how it works. Structure isn’t a magic ingredient; it’s the thing that makes the story function. You can adjust, fix, change, re-structure structure if the structure doesn’t work. You cannot address or remedy something that isn’t there.
I began the fourth novel again.
Then again, then again. With each new round of work I had a better view of the train wreck of my lack of skill. I got it. I still wasn’t telling the story but now I knew what was wrong. I had a lot to learn. Weirdly, this seemed doable. Like something if you did it badly, you could actually get better at doing it.
The novel I’d been imagining was too big and sprawling for someone at my level of proficiency to cope with, let alone succeed in doing what I had the nerve to envision. I began to search with growing interest and curiosity within the reaches of the novel for a story inside its pulses that I could tell—one that would work. I began writing again, trying out scenes from the drafts as the spine of their own unfolding.
One morning in this process, Valentine went to the movies with her cousin. Suddenly I saw a novel that I could write.