False Starts and Failures in Writing
For well over a decade I have wanted to write a science fiction book about an epic, near-future war in space, written as though it were a nonfiction history book. I dabbled in that style back in 2011 when I first wrote a short novel about the first day of the war. Thinking I knew what I was doing, I continued on with the second book, completed it, read it, and hated it. The second book had somehow drifted into a traditional space opera scifi novel. Not historical at all. How did that happen? How had I drifted so far from my original vision?
Truth is, it was because I had gotten lazy. It was easier for me to write in the fictional style. But it’s not what I wanted, so I pitched the second book.
Painfully, I realized I needed to learn how to write nonfiction. Writing a nonfiction “history” book required an entirely different set of skills I did not yet have. Luckily I have a wife who is a journalist. Luckily I have a love of history and stacks of great books. For several years I read every history book that interested me, learning how the authors organized them, their styles, what I liked and didn’t like, what kept me reading and what bored me to tears.
I was finally ready! I began knocking out the new book. 10,000 words completed. 20,000. I went back and read it. Bored to tears. What the hell? Why? It was too dry. I was too hung up on the ‘this happened and then this happened’. I did not care enough about the characters and I found myself emotionally ambivalent about the war’s outcome. Other than that… shit.
Writing in this format is hard! “Screw that,” I thought. I’ll change direction. I’ll write it like an oral history. That will allow me to blend the narrative with the historical style of things. I read great example books (World War Z, The Good War), once again seeing how they were organized and stylized. I wrote the first 10,000 words of an oral history, read it… and didn’t love it. It was OK, but I didn’t LOVE it. It took me a bit to admit why: again it wasn’t my original vision.
Whether stupid, stubborn or both, it was back to the drawing board…and the hard work required. More study, more reading, more analyzing, and lots more experimenting with several thousand more words written until finally the recipe for the secret sauce began to materialize. At first it wasn’t entirely in my own voice (having read lots of authors I admired), but once I had the recipe, those influential voices quickly faded out and were replaced with my own.
It’s still not easy. For me I don’t think it ever will be. But I look back to all the false starts and failures as entirely necessary. It took writing a few hundred thousand words that none will ever read, but from it I am now in a groove and thrilled to see the original vision finally coming to light. Will people enjoy it? Who knows. But (finally!) I am.