Welcome to our $3 reward level, where people ask me questions, mostly about the business, craft, and process of writing, and I answer them as best I can. Reasons this is a good idea:
* I am an internationally published author
* I release an average of four books a year
* I have won multiple major awards
* I actually make my living doing this
Reasons this is a terrible idea:
* Have you met me
* Like, ever
* I should not give advice to anyone
Now it's time to ask me literally anything, and watch as I flail around in an attempt to provide a coherent answer. Please feel free to discuss in the comments, and to submit new questions either here or by emailing me through my website contact form. As a reminder, this reward tier only works if we have questions: please, please feel free to share yours. If you want to ask anonymously, just send your question in via my website, and say that you'd like me to leave your name off when I answer. If you do not ask me to redact your name, it will be included, if only because it's fun to see your name in print sometimes.
This month's question comes from Janet, who asks: "How do you write novels without getting too introspective? How can a person write a novel others would find interesting without thinking too much about past events best forgotten? When a person writes they are bringing all of their experiences into what they write. I'm not sure this is being phrased coherently. Writing is something I enjoy but find it difficult to write without thinking about things I have worked very hard to forget."
First off, I want to acknowledge that we're really late with this one--it should have been posted at the end of July, and I'll be posting another before the end of the month. I've had some medical stuff to deal with, and that's not your problem, but I wanted to make it clear that I knew and understood that I had slipped.
Now for the actual question! So how do you write a novel without getting too introspective?
I have not yet figured that one out, quite honestly. I can't even write an advice column without woolgathering. The trick, to me, seems to be finding a way to make the introspection interesting to other people. That's the trick. That's the challenge.
And no matter how you do it, you're going to get it wrong. One of the things most frequently praised about my Up-and-Under books (sorry, A. Deborah Baker's Up-and-Under books) is the congenial tone the narrator takes with the reader. It's a chummy, intimate omniscient narrator, and I made that narrative choice because of what A. Deborah Baker was trying to do when "she" wrote the series in-universe. Does it get in the way of the narrative? I guess it might, sometimes, but for me, writing in that voice is the most fun part of the whole series. I'm so used to being close that being able to step back and say "I see the whole story, I see the shape of everything, these are the parts I want you to pay the most attention to" is really enjoyable for me. But is it too introspective? I do not know. At least one reviewer thought so, calling the omniscient narrator "intrusive" and "a bit too much."
You have to write a book you want to read before you do anything else. Write a book that will make you happy. Maybe that book will also make an agent or an editor happy, and maybe it won't; we're in a time right now where that doesn't need to matter, because if the book makes you happy enough that you want to share it, you can self-publish (I have no advice about how to best self-publish, and even if I did, it would be out of date basically as soon as I stopped typing. If you're curious about self-publishing, there are many helpful websites and YouTube videos that can assist you). Writing the book should make you happy enough to be worth it all on its own.
It takes a long time to write a book, absolutely. But let's break it down to the bare essentials. A modern fantasy novel is going to be somewhere between 80,000 and 150,000 words long, give or take. Much under 80,000 and it's a novella; much over 150,000 and it's a murder weapon. Let's say that with one thing and another, you can find the time to write 500 words a week. That's slightly under 100 words a day, and 2,000 words a month. That's not terrible! That's 2,000 words that didn't exist before you got started!
At 2,000 words a month, you will average 24,000 words a year. That's a lot of words! It's also few enough that you should be able to review those 24,000 words and make sure they're the words you actually want them to be. And at that rate, even if you're on the high end of modern fantasy, you'll finish a book every six years. Yeah, that's a long time, but also, it's a book. Books are a lot of work and a huge accomplishment, and not necessarily meant to happen quickly.
So if you can write a book in six years, and edit it as you go, does it really matter if it's too introspective? It has to make you happy before it can make anyone else happy. Write your book, however slowly it goes, and keep writing it, because the difference between a finished book other people can read and an unfinished idea that no one else gets to enjoy is 2,000 words a month.
We all need to be a little happier.
So that's that. Like all of us, I'm stressed and sad and cabin fever-y from COVID, but please, please, ask me questions for August! I don't want to have to start taking questions from Elsie, it would not end well! Remember that I'll take questions about anything, and that if it can be answered with "yes" or "no," it's not a great question for this format; also if it's something I can't flog for paragraphs, like "how often do you brush your cats." If you're tired of this reward and want to suggest a replacement, drop those here too.
Meanwhile, if you want your question to be kept for future use, emailing is better than commenting, if only so I've got a long term copy in my inbox. But I do see all the questions, and try to remember to copy and keep the really interesting ones.
(Photo guide: This is a shot of me napping on Thomas before he had to be shaved for his own health and wellbeing.)