Great news! Last week, I finished the first draft of my new book! 🥳🎉👏
Bad news… It’s absolutely awful.
🎢 The Drop
I’m sitting in a coffee shop on Bethnal Green in London. All around me, creative types are clacking away (everyone here has the same model of MacBook Pro) to the background of brilliant 60s soul music, mugs of expensive coffee growing cold.
I’m totally one of them, right? I fit in. My laptop screen shows screeds of words, a full-length novel, sitting right here on Scrivener. It looks impressive!
But what these cool people don’t know is that I’m an imposter! My novel is bad. It’s so bad, in fact, that upon rereading it, I’m wondering if it’s time to give up writing books altogether.
After writing the last chapter of the book, I put it aside for a few days and concentrated on other things. I was looking forward to getting back into it. The plan was to reread the book and touch it up as I went. Change a simile here and there, strike out an extraneous paragraph or two, choose some synonyms. If I needed to make any major changes, I’d make a note and come back to it on an official second pass.
Instead, I didn’t even get ONE CHAPTER IN before I was making copious notes. Big notes. Story-changing notes. Character-motivation-is-wrong notes.
I realised: in order to be an absorbing and entertaining read, this book didn’t just need touching up, it needed an overhaul.
And that’s nothing new, right? By now, I know the process. I’ve written a grand total of SEVEN first drafts of full novels and all of them bad. It’s the rewriting which makes a book good … right?
But still.
This draft is … stinky.
It pongs. It reeks. It stanks to the highest level of heaven.
Which makes me wonder: do I continue pushing shit up hill, spending excess effort only to achieve the highest potential outcome of ‘good enough’? Or, do I give up writing and spend my time doing something I’m actually good at?
💪 I Could Get Buff or Rich
Let’s run the thought experiment. What if I gave up? What would my life look like?
For a start, I’d have a lot more free time. Currently, I get out of bed sometime between 6am and 7am to write. Depending on how fruitful my writing session is, I’m showering around 9am and clocking into my workday at around 9:30am. If it’s a lame session, I’ll come back to it in the afternoon.
If nothing else, I’ll gain 2-4 hours of free time every day.
If I put that time toward the gym, I’d get massive.
If I put that time toward playing guitar or piano, I’d be able to serenade my girlfriend by Christmas.
If I put it toward learning about trading crypto or stocks, I could become a millionaire.
Better yet, I could use the time on leisure. I could cuddle my partner in bed instead of zombie-stumbling to the kitchen and isolating myself on the couch all morning. I could read, make kombucha, take up gardening. The possibilities are endless!
The downside: I would no longer be a writer. I’d be a person who doesn’t write. Not only that, I’d be a person who’ll never improve at the craft of writing.
Could I handle that change of identity? Would I be happier?
🩹 Is There Anything I Can Do?
The draft is bad, sure. But it’s the first draft. It’s meant to be bad. I wrote it fast and, for this book, I promised myself I’d never go back over any of it until I finished.
Improving the writing is straightforward. It’s simple — which is not to be confused with easy. Only by painstaking rewriting will the writing improve. Which I intended to do, anyway.
It might take more time and effort than I hoped, but if I stick to it, I’ll eventually have a publishable piece of work. The story is there. The characters are there. The writing, while admittedly often poke-your-eyes-out bad, does have moments of charm.
It’s just gonna take time.
Luckily, I have time. I’m using it right now, seconds ticking by while I sit here like an East London Creative Wanker, my coffee going cold next to me (if I drink, I’ll have to get another one to justify my presence and at £3.50, it’ll bankrupt me).
Time is passing anyway, so I may as well do something worthwhile with it. I consider the act of storytelling one of the most worthwhile pursuits there is, so it stands to reason I should use my time doing so.
So, I’ll keep going. Of course I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep learning and my books will improve in quality, as is the tried-and-true experience of every writer prior to this moment. Writing is a muscle, and it needs to be stretched and ripped in order to grow stronger, like any other.
🥉 Conclusion
I’m not a brilliant writer. Sometimes, if you catch me after a couple of glasses of red wine, I might admit to having written bits and pieces of prose or dialogue that could, maybe, when looked at from a certain perspective, be considered brilliant.
But, genuinely: I am not a gifted nor talented writer.
Instead: I am a practiced, persistent, hard-working writer. I’m happy with that. This industry and climate rewards relentlessness more than it does raw talent. I’ve made enough stuff to know that writing is terrible until it isn’t.
And if by some cruel twist of chance, I continue practicing writing my entire life and my books are still awful, then at least I’ll know I tried. I’ll be proud of trying and failing. It’s better than regretting not trying.
📣 Shout Out to: Colin From Accounts
This Australian series that plays on BBC was recommended to us so many times that we finally gave it a jam. Now I’m a person who FROTHS about how wonderful it is.
It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and it often deals with deeper, real life themes, but the most admirable quality is its unashamedly Australianness. The swearing, the slang, the short fused aggression — somehow it adds up to Charm.