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With just a slight movement of my eyes, I can easily shift my focus away from the computer monitor to the quote I have taped just above the screen:
"Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish."
- E.L. Konigsburg
I stared at that quote several times a day when I was writing my novel, and each time, it gave me a much-needed kick in the backside. You see, for at least a decade, I've thought about writing a book. I've talked about writing a book. I've wanted to write a book. But I didn't write a book. And now that I have, it turns out that most everyone I strike up a conversation with also wants to write a book. They really, really do, and they just know that if they did, it'd be so much better than the drivel that gets published every year. They may be right, but the sad truth is that none of us will ever know for sure, because they'll never actually write a book.
Like so much in life, writing a book is much harder to actually do than it is to talk about. The good news is, in a curious sort of way, there comes a point in the process where the writing becomes easier -- and a great deal more fun and fulfilling -- than all that endless talking ever was.
But it all begins with the simple act of applying your butt to the chair.
This is all, of course, much easier said than done. In my case, the road that led to a finished manuscript began with the planets aligning in a nightmarish scenario all at once: First, there was the abrupt folding of the main outlet I had for my writing. For two years, I'd spent every week putting together "Beat Sheet," a column about digital music for the Industry Standard magazine. The money was good, the paychecks were regular and the subject was endlessly fascinating. Then -- poof! -- the magazine went under and I realized that I'd put all of my proverbial eggs in one basket, a cardinal sin for a freelance writer.
But all was not necessarily lost, I thought. Almost right away, I got an incredibly lucrative -- if howlingly dull -- assignment to write a story for a trade magazine. Which included a trip to my old stomping grounds in San Francisco. Sweet! It was a super-tight deadline, but I managed to turn in my piece and hope for more work from the dot-com that had contracted me. The date of the invoice I submitted was September 11, 2001.
Thoughts of writing fled for the next few days as I hovered anxiously in front of the television and kept my family close. I did manage to pen an essay about the attacks, but other than that, my personal writing well was as dry as I've ever known it. Which was fine by me: If I'd had to write about technology while the world was coming to an end, I would have gone quietly mad.
But when I finally roused myself from my MSNBC-induced trance, I realized that my own personal world had changed -- perhaps for good -- in the aftermath of the attacks. Clearly, there wasn't going to be much freelance work until the massive national uncertainty passed. The idea of getting a day job was enticing, but let's face it: This is San Diego. The Sunday job listings under "editorial" were sparse before 9-11 and nonexistent afterwards. What to do?
The novel, my psyche whispered. Time to write the novel. Being a methodical sort of procrastinator, for a month I thought about the process. How does one begin? What's the first step? And the next? And after that? I looked through my bookshelves and dug out my old copy of Anne LaMott's "Bird by Bird." Unsatisfied, I requested a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing" from the library. (Did I mention a sudden drop in income around the house?) I made notes -- not about character, not yet -- but about the mechanics of the thing. What was the word count of a typical novel? (About 100,000.) How many words could I realistically write in a single day? (About 2,000.) I did the math and mapped out the date I wanted to be finished with a first draft. (I work best under deadline. Your mileage may vary.)
And finally, one day in mid-October, I began to write. At first, I had lots of worries. The early choices are big ones: What voice will tell the story? If you opt for first-person, is the sense of immediacy worth the trade-off in the lack of an omniscient, mind-reading narrator? I decided to just go with what felt right. Two weeks later, I e-mailed the first chapter to a writer friend, and once she gave me the thumb's up, I vowed to follow my new mentor's advice -- as hard as it was for an attention-hound like me -- and not show any more pages to anyone until the book was done.
"There'll be time to show off what you've done when you finish … but even after finishing I think you must be cautious and give yourself a chance to think while the story is still like a field of freshly fallen snow, absent of any tracks save your own."
- Stephen King
One of the hardest things to learn while writing was to trust my own instincts. Every day, I'd have at least a rough idea of what I was going to put down on the page, and every day -- without fail -- I ended up going in a new, often surprising directions. I followed those tangents, and I'm glad I did. Sometimes I moved the plot forward without even realizing it, placing a motorcycle in the story, just because, then realizing later that the bike had a very real purpose after all.
I gave myself permission to take my time, to look around the rooms that my characters found themselves in, to describe the smells, pay attention to what song was playing on the radio, to have a mental picture of what clothes people were wearing, whether or not I actually laid every little detail out for the reader. I became immersed in the era my book is set in, browsing almanacs and Web sites for tidbits to flesh out the story. I let myself procrastinate -- up to a point -- so long as I got those 2,000 words a day out of my head and onto the page.
And some days, I wrote considerably more. Time permitting, I'd write as long as the muse would sing, and if the story flowed, I let it come. One particularly memorable day, I wrote 6,000 words and would have kept going if other obligations hadn't demanded that I stop. I came to look forward to driving alone, because that was the time that my brain seemed to be particularly prone to rambling through the story, my subconscious answering questions that I didn't even know I'd asked.
It was hard not to have feedback along the way, and I have to admit that I slipped a few times. I'd e-mail passages that I was especially proud of to a few friends, tapping my fingers with impatience until they replied with the praise I so obviously craved. (Luckily, none of them told me to keep my day job, although that was, of course, the risk I took when I couldn't stop myself from foisting my deathless prose on unsuspecting pals.) And my husband wisely insisted that he didn't want to read the book until it was finished, even though I all but begged him on repeated occasions.
And finally, after about five months, I found myself wrapping things up. Plot points fell into place with such inevitability that I was almost able to fool myself into thinking that I'd actually planned out the story in advance. But I hadn't, of course. I'd trusted my own intuition with near-blind dedication, taking it as an act of faith that the story would lead me to where it needed to go.
The day that I took a deep breath and wrote the words "the end" was a bittersweet one. The triumphant satisfaction of actually finishing was tinged with poignancy. Of course the work wasn't done -- in fact, I ended up adding two chapters and the editing process continues, months later -- but once the pages sat piled neatly in a stack, I knew that whatever came next, that sweet feeling of sitting down at the keyboard and letting my fingers translate the whispers of the muse into words on the page was mostly done.
Truth to tell, I miss it so much I do believe I'll be starting another book any day now.
Julene Snyder is a freelance writer and novelist living in San Diego. She is currently shopping for a literary agent. Visit her website.
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