On March 24, 2021, I decided to write a book. I naively assumed creative writing cannot be that difficult. Clearly, I was wrong.
Today is November 20th and I know better now. Initially, I began writing a science fiction book called Retrospect Lost but after a few months I gave up on it. It didn’t take long for me to learn how debilitating imposter syndrome is for new (or ‘wannabe’) authors.
To make up for my lack of natural ability to write a masterpiece, I did what I always do: read. I found many books on writing a novel and began my autodidactic path to writing mastery. I started with four books because I have yet to learn that simply buying a variety of books on a topic is not enough to master a skill.
These were my starter books:
- Outlining Your Novel by K.M. Weiland
- Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
- How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson
- The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne
Each book is brilliant, or so I assume. The only book I managed to read from cover to cover was How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. It’s also the most puerile of the four books because the author uses a fable to explain the concepts. However, I enjoyed it. Perhaps I appreciated the fable approach due to other books such as The Goal and The Phoenix Project. I’m a simple man. I lack an English lit degree. Hell, I never enjoyed literature classes in high school. This leads me to my next point.
I lack confidence in my fiction writing. If I had to write a research paper or non-fiction book, I would excel. Creative writing, however, is an art and not a science. My professional background consists of a career in Information Technology and a 12-year stint in the Army National Guard. What I mean is my imagination shut off for over 20 years.
Imagination is, in my opinion, 45% of what’s necessary to write a science fiction novel. Bummer.
What about the other 55%? In my assessment, another 45% of writing a successful novel comes from expertise in grammar, vocabulary, and knowledge of story structure, character archetypes, and other literary knowledge. Again, bummer.
Finally, I believe 10% of writing a successful novel is persistence. Unfortunately, due to my psyche over the last few years, I lack the drive necessary to accomplish the major task of completing an outline, never mind an entire first draft.
I started NaNoWriMo on November 1st with a head full of steam (that’s a metaphor – see this old man can learn something). The boiler pressure called motivation fizzled away a few days later.
If you’re not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s an acronym (sort of) for National Novel Writing Month that takes place every November. The point of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words, or a novella, in one month. Rather than continuing with my science fiction novel Retrospect Lost, I decided to change my focus to a thriller novel about a Catholic orphanage. Although that story seemed more fun to me, I had no characters, setting, or plot. I just started writing. Then a few days into the month I started changing my mind about the plot. Then a few days after that, I let the imposter syndrome take over again and haven’t written another word.
By my math, I should have 33,340 words written of that novel (tentatively titled The Altar). Guess how many I have.
8817
Still, that’s not bad. However, I’m scatter-brained. My ADD brain shouts things to me like:
- Make it a horror novel – you love horror.
- Make it a sci-fi novel – your sci-fi website and Twitter account focus on that and you’ll get more attention (aka, sales) that way.
- Include witchcraft.
- No, keep it realistic.
- It should take place in the 1960s.
- No, it should take place in present-time.
- Your writing sucks.
- Who cares, just get the first draft done then you’ll go back and improve it.
- This is pointless and no one will read it.
- Write it for your wife/family.
- They don’t like what I like.
- Fuck it I’ll turn on the television and watch horror movies on Shudder for 6+ hours today.
- My wife told me to start with short stories. Fine.
- I wrote and submitted another short story to dailysciencefiction.com and they rejected it. Again. Why bother?
- It was only your second submission and 4th short story you’ve written your entire life. Chill. Frank Herbert received like 60 rejection letters for Dune until Chilton published it. And they publish car manuals. Life is funny. Enjoy the ride.
- Let me log onto Udemy and take one of the 5 writing courses I wasted my money on.
- Let me read one of the other books I bought, read a few chapters of, and put down without taking notes or highlighting or trying any of the practice examples.
- You’re more into horror than sci-fi lately. Write a blog post on one of the movies you just watched.
- Start a new podcast about horror movies.
- Should I start a new website for horror?
- Update your personal blog and actually use it so you don’t have to create a new fucking blog for every topic you think of.
- Shit, what’s the login page for that one?
- Damn, this site theme sucks. Let me waste hours updating it.
- Fuck it, I’m going basic on this one. No themes, no SEO, no social media.
- (cat jumps on keyboard for 23rd time)
That was an unnecessary tangent but it’s an absolutely accurate example of my brain at work.
Oh, I just remembered that I enrolled in the local state college and am considering a creative writing degree to combat my imposter syndrome. Then again, I haven’t actually registered for any classes.
WTF.
I figure there’s no way I’m the only one going through this experience which makes me feel a little better. Even writing this post feels therapeutic. Did you notice I changed my writing from past-tense to present in the last few sentences? I pay strict attention to that when I do talk myself into writing fiction. Check another box in the writing mastery list off!