Writing a book is hard.
I've only ever done it once before and it was excruciating. The worst part is that it took forever and wasn't even all that good.
I decided to partake in National Novel Writing Month, which is a challenge where you attempt to write 50 000 words in the month of November, ideally at a pace of about 1700 words a day. Which I know doesn't sound like a lot. And it's not, on any giving day I can blurt out 1700 words and I wouldn't even have wasted an hour of my time.
But doing it 30 days in a row and fitting those 1700 words into some cohesive whole while slowly burning out on the work is hard. Anyone who attempted it with me can attest to that.
And developing the discipline necessary to work even when the work is dull, difficult, tedious and the end product is a little crap is hard. No one likes writing crap. No one likes willfully making bad art. You want to make something that's great. Something notable. Something worthy of the massive time expenditure.
I got about 20 000 words into it when the burnout hit and life just caught up with me. I had exams, something I tried to get ahead of by upping my goal to about 3500 a day in order to stay ahead of the curve enough to give me the time I needed to study, but two weeks in I found myself struggling until I was 10 000 behind, then 20 000, then the task became insurmountable.
At the end of the month, I found myself asking what it was about? Why did I do this? Why have I decided to start writing a book that I couldn't finish, why did I attempt this?
Originally it was to overcome what's called Shiny New Object Syndrome. It's something that plagues creatives, we're always starting a new project and never finishing anything, just laying with a bunch of unfinished works in folders.
I wanted to finish the book in November, edit it in December and then wash my hands of it, January first the novel would be what it would be and I would finally be able to say, this is done, this is finished, I have written a second book.
But I still wanted it to be good.
And at first, it felt that way. I was vibing with the characters, I was fresh and flushed with creative energy, and 3500 actually came pretty easily. Each day the words came harder but I liked the idea and concept of my novel. I made a cover for it because I was starting to enjoy the process of writing.
But then I got burnt out.
Work on something long enough that doesn't want to be finished and you can easily find yourself hating the work for the mere task of existing in an incomplete state. It's irrational but the frustration is more with yourself. You ask why you can't finish the book, why you can't write better sentences, every word you have to coax and snatch and yank and tug and after an hour you'll have written 100 words and you'll hate each one of them and you'll ask yourself why you're so crap.
And your brain is lying to you. Your brain is tired. Maybe you'll take a break but your brain is also lazy, and one day off turns into two days, two days turns into three, three turns into a week, a week turns into two weeks. Your brain doesn't like struggling, no brain does. A struggling brain feels stupid, it starts hating itself. Your brain feels like a bodybuilder lifting half the weight of its contemporaries in its class.
Well here's some truth for your brain;
You aren't competing with anyone. You should be heading towards your own goal. Your brain isn't stupid, it's just a little tired, and have you ever tried heavy lifting when you're tired? It's like the weight has doubled, only you're half as strong. Most of those sentences weren't crap, they were just mundane, and your brain focuses on all the rough ones because you haven't spat out a poetic phrase in a long time. And even the crap ones aren't as bad as you think they are, your brain is lying to you. You had an end goal in mind but now the picture is hazy, and when you're lost without a map, or if the map looks wrong, you tend to want to stand still until you can find direction again. But you shouldn't wait, you should go, even if it is the wrong direction. Rather go to the wrong place and get turned around then go nowhere at all.
Maybe you already knew that. Maybe you didn't. I want to tell you to go somewhere, even if it's the wrong direction, there is so much value in being wrong and then learning what's right. I want to tell you that you need 10 hours of sleep and 3 solid meals because your mind is a muscle and it needs fuel to be strong. I want to tell you that you made something, even if it's incomplete, and if you just stuck with it, if you could just pour all that energy you'll inevitably focus somewhere else, you could create a significant and wonderful piece of art.
But if it were that easy, I'd have told myself that too, and we'd both be excellent novelists.
Here's what I can say;
When I finished my first novel it was an iterative process. I'd written about 75% of it when I started giving it to my friends and their feedback encouraged me to continue. I wrote the last 8 chapters in one night in a mad sprint to the end and I never looked back, and it shows in the work. When I finished my first game, I made the scope so small that it had to be something I could finish within 5 days. Each day I'd send off a prototype to a friend and their feedback helped guide my goals.
If you want the clickbait title of this article, here it is. Five Tips To Get You To Finish That Damn Book.
1. Keep It Simple, Stupid
2. Hit The Ground Running
3. Get Feedback As Soon As Possible
4. Take Care Of Yourself
5. Finish Strong
But why should you listen to me? I failed NaNoWriMo 2018. I didn't do anything notable. You want to do something notable. You want the success story, that's the exciting one, the fun one, the exceptional one. You want to be exceptional. I want to be exceptional.
But failing NaNo makes you exceptional. It makes you notable. Failing is okay. I won't beat myself up about it because even if I didn't win, I still won. I now have 20 000 words I didn't have, almost halfway to a short novel. I now have more experience as a writer. Failure is as productive as success, sometimes even more so. We should all fail more, all learn more, and if only we could view failure not as the opposite of where we want to be, but the place we need to be in order to grow.
Would I do it again? Perhaps. There's a Camp NaNo in April and I'd say that'd be a far better fit than the November date, as November tends to clash with my life a lot. And I love a good game jam, I love seeing how much I can do in a short amount of time, it's like a sprint but for your brain.
But if you're where I'm at I want you to know I'm rooting for you, and that you can do it, and I hope we both manage to conquer our Shiny New Object Syndrome.
