I recently reached one of the many milestones that budding authors stumble across, the realization that even after completing our first book, we have only set foot on the long road to learning our craft.
I see accomplished authors nodding their heads. I also see writers on their first book staring at me in terror. Say what now? You mean even after I struggle through this enormous project of my first book, after years and years of agony and revising, you say I’m not done, not master of my craft?
OK, so none of us, myself included, actually believed this, but there definitely seems to be a wall right here. Your baby is written, polished to shine, gleefully dispatched to agents, you feel relieved and elated, and success is just around the corner… Wait, a rejection? Bound to happen, don’t worry. Another, soon to be a pile.
That’s when the doubt sets in. Should you have used an editor? Almost certainly. Was your beginning compelling enough? Obviously not. Were your characters strong, your plot a masterpiece? You probably winged it, read a few books, knew enough to avoid obvious stereotypes and clichés, deus ex machina, etc. You know about these things, because you’re a writer… right?
You were prepared for this. You knew that first books rarely sell. No problem. Put your firstborn aside and start the next. I did this, but started to worry that my characters weren’t unique enough, that my setting was too complex. I spent ages constructing an intricate plot of twists and sub twists, where nothing was what it seemed, and the reader would gasp at my cleverness. Crash! That’s the sound of my house of cards plot falling down. The nagging doubts of my first book were making me try too hard, tempting me to write beyond my abilities. Oh no. I’ve lost it. I can’t write after all.
Ok, relax. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I realized that I had learned enough of the craft of storytelling and the mechanics of writing, that I could now look objectively at my work and see my (inevitable) shortcomings. Much of what I did in that first book was good, but I achieved it mainly on excitement alone. I finished a novel. That’s not easy! Inherently, I’m now a better writer. I know what I did wrong, but I’m forging ahead without taking the time to ground my empirical experience with appropriate theory. I messed around with cola and mints and made a cool bottle rocket, and now I want to build a solid-fuel, multi-stage booster without studying physics.
So, no, we’re not done. Time to take it to the next level. Back to college. Now is the time to work with an editor on that first book. Even if you don’t resubmit it, you’ll learn a lot about sentence and paragraph structure, writing tight prose, POV, show don’t tell. Read more books about plot and characterization. (Plot vs. Character by Jeff Gerke) Map out your main characters’ Goals, Motivations and Conflicts ahead of time, so you know how they relate to each other, and what drives the tension and drama in your book. Learn how to outline properly, so that you can master pace and suspense, and how to make each scene flow seamlessly to the next, and the next. (Outlining your Novel by K.M. Weiland) Learn the basics of structure, to build yourself a steel and concrete plot framework that won’t come down like a house of cards. (The Anatomy of Story by John Truby) These are the things I am currently embarked on, what about you?
Please comment and tell me about your experiences (good or bad) after finishing your first book? Surely I’m not alone at this milestone?
