How to marry your book

Or, how to keep the spark alive in the years it takes to write a novel

Someone once told me, “Ideas are free and everywhere. What matters is the execution.”

It was said in the context of tech, years ago when everyone had big ideas that they were simultaneously shopping around for VC funding while being really secretive in case those ideas were stolen.

But it applies just as much to writing. Go to any writer’s conference and you’ll hear the claims of, “Every idea has been done before; what matters is how you do it,” or “What publishers want is the same, but different. The same ideas that have worked before, but with a new spin.”

If you really want to feel that visceral sense of “It’s all been done before” visit TVtropes.org. When that starts to depress you into feeling that all your surprising plot twists are just rehashes of I am your father in some shape or form, it can be difficult to keep up the motivation to finish your novel.

After all, what are you doing that’s fresh and new?

I’ve been working on a certain novel for nearly 4 years now. It’s currently in its third major rewrite, and bears no resemblance to how it started. Yes, the three main characters are the same and the central theme is the same, but the plot has changed, as has the point of view. It feels like I’ve been carving away at a piece of marble and only now is the story beginning to emerge, and even now it’s unfinished, like one of Michelangelo’s prisoners.

How do I keep the spark alive? How do I find the motivation to keep carving away? It’s because I can see the finished statue in my mind’s eye.

Yesterday, I flew to New York. It’s strange how quickly I’ve gotten used to travel again where an 8-hour flight felt short. In preparation for the flight I had certain reading material prepped. I have rituals when it comes to my flight-time reading material. I don’t need it to be amazing. But I need it to be predictably good.

What’s the difference? There are certain novels I’ve found to be life-changing, like Arundathi Roy’s The God of Small Things, or Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, but I would not take a book along on an airplane that promised that sort of thing. When I need to pass 8 hours reading, I don’t need a literary sensation. I need Angst with a Happy Ending.

Ultimately, the process of writing a book is very much like Angst with a Happy Ending, maybe with a side of Slow Burn. You and the novel are struggling over a long period of time, each shaping the other. Because let’s not kid ourselves, the statue shapes the sculptor, not the other way around. Writing a novel, carving a statue, doing creative work of any kind changes you inside. It reshapes your understanding of the world, of yourself, and even your body. Why else would we do it?

The novel is created in the author’s image, and if it feels like a prisoner trapped in marble at times it’s because that’s the current outward manifestation of our own internal self. There’s no sense in being frustrated with its being unfinished. It will always be unfinished, even if and when it gets published. Publishing a novel is just about taking a snapshot of your current unfinished self and allowing the world to see you in that vulnerability.

So what does it mean to marry your book? It means accepting that your book is not an inanimate thing to be done, but rather an imperfect and evolving creation with a life of its own, to be loved and interacted with over time. Until the Happy Ending, at least.