16/07/2020 - Writing The Book Is The Easy Bit

Another piece of writing advice I read a long time ago is ‘writing the novel is the easy bit’. I thought this was insane when I first read it. It’s absolutely true, if a little simplistic.

Writing a first draft, for me, in my personal experience, is one of the easiest parts of writing. In fact, let’s try for a list of things starting at what’s easiest and getting progressively more difficult.

1)      Planning a new novel (writing a plot outline, doing character interrogation etc.)

This one is a bit variable because I sometimes am able to write but not plan because of my health, but generally it’s the easiest thing to do.

2)      Write a first draft

I can bang out a first draft in two weeks. I did that last year in fact. I can only do this thanks to comprehensive planning, and I know now that this is part of a boom and bust cycle I’ve been falling to for years thanks to my chronic fatigue syndrome, but still. I can do it.

3)      Getting feedback on work

I’m aware that some people hate reading feedback on their work. I don’t really get this. I want my work to be in the best shape possible and for that, feedback is absolutely essential. It can sting sometimes, but mostly finding out something that’s bad in my work is a great opportunity to turn it into something awesome.

4)      Do a draft re-write based on editors notes

5)      Self-edit a draft

One of the things I hate about the process is working out what’s wrong with my own story, working out what I can do to fix it and then implementing those fixes. This isn’t a universal rule – sometimes an idea for a fix comes to me and I enjoy the process (one of these fixes recently led to me re-writing 90% of a draft – around 70,000 words – but it was still fun and relatively easy) so, again, the difficulty of this one is a bit variable. Generally, however, I find it easier to edit things if someone tells me what to do and why. Hooray for editors!

6)      Selling books

Back when I was a little healthier I went to a bunch of book fairs to sell books. This was tricky but fulfilling. I’m not a natural salesman, but as the end point of the process it felt good to be out there and getting my work into peoples’ hands. Selling the things is definitely harder than writing them, however. For me. People have different skill sets.

7)      Publicity

This is like selling books but way more abstract. You’re not making direct contact with customers, you’re trying to work out where and how you should spend your time to maximise potential sales, which is just… bizarre, alien and terrifying.

8)      Dealing with the financial aspect of being an indie author

Money is terrifying, and trying to be a professional writer is unbelievably expensive. In order to self-publish a novel,  and for that novel to be good, requires you to pay for multiple rounds of editing, a proof reader, a cover design, an audiobook if you’re feeling really fancy, and all the publicity stuff such as facebook advertising. You could, in theory, spend every penny you have on one single book and see less than £100 in return.

9)      Submitting novels to agents

This isn’t technically challenging, but I’ve been rejected… hundreds and hundreds of times at this point. Definitely more than two hundred times, very possibly more than three hundred. That has taken a psychological toll.

I’ll cut the list off there but I hope that communicates the truth of the statement ‘writing the novel is the easy bit’. The top 5 are all writing based, the bottom 5 are all the things that come afterwards. If I’d known this before I started writing my first novel I very well might not have started.