Icon by Peg Kerr Ihinger
After doing this for as long as I have, I’ve come to the conclusion that nearly all writers have a point in their process where their story is fragile. It’s a different point for every writer, and sometimes different stories become brittle at different points, unexpectedly. A friend or editor makes an offhand remark, and suddenly the author’s enthusiasm evaporates and the glittering idea-crystal shatters into useless shards. An article in a blog or trade publication implies that anyone writing that sort of thing must only be doing it for the money, and the life drains out of a half-done story, like a soap bubble popping or air leaking out of a balloon. The author, faced with an unsatisfactory scene or a stubborn plot-point, starts second-guessing themselves, and eventually becomes convinced that nothing in the story is original, interesting, or worth continuing.
Approximately five percent of these incidents, in my opinion, blow up the story because the remark, article, or realization has hit an actual, underlying problem with the story, which the author then has to deal with. The other ninety-five percent are the wrong thing at the wrong time—if they’d come along a month later or earlier, or a chapter later or earlier, the author would have shrugged or nodded and then carried on writing. The story wasn’t fragile then, so the comment, information, misgiving, or whatever didn’t break it.
Unfortunately, there isn’t always a way to tell exactly when a story is fragile. Many stories are vulnerable at the idea stage, when they aren’t fully developed. Getting negative feedback at this point—even (or especially) if it isn’t intended as negative feedback—can make the writer feel that there is no point in putting in the work to develop the idea further. This is one reason why so much writing advice advocates not discussing your ideas or stories with anyone until they are finished. It’s really good advice if one is particularly sensitive to random comments that could be perceived as negative, but it doesn’t work at all for writers like me, whose best process involves bouncing ideas off of other people at nearly every point.
Some writers find their stories reliably get fragile at some point during the writing of the first draft, especially if things have gotten sticky or taken an unexpected turn. Experience generally shows whether this happens routinely at a certain point (beginning, middle, climax; chapter 7 every time, or just at 15,000 words; at the first/second/final turning point; etc.). Once the writer recognizes the predictability of the cycle, they can take steps to guard the story whenever it is likely to be particularly brittle (see “not talking about it,” above). With enough experience, one can sometimes recognize that yes, this story just took a major hit, but it was only major because it was vulnerable, and continuing to work on it will bring it to a successful finish. Other times, the story’s fragility is due to a real-life crisis (a death in the family, losing a job, being affected by a natural disaster, etc.), in which case setting writing aside for later may be the best move, even if “later” means the particular story waits for fifteen years and seven novels before you come back to it. Nothing says you have to work on stuff in the order in which it occurred to you.
And some writers are faced with deliberate sabotage. I’ve met writers who attended classes or conferences where the presenter not only adhered to the old saying that “if anything can keep you from writing, let it,” they took it upon themselves to actively discourage their listeners from trying to become writers, or indeed, writing anything at all. I’ve met writers who’d been in critique groups where one or more members viewed commenting as a zero-sum game—and tore down all the other members in an attempt to “win.” I’ve met writers with “helpful” friends/family who apparently never said anything positive about the writer’s work, but harped on every misplaced comma and grammatical error, while not-so-gently insisting that the writer change the viewpoint character, rewrite in first or third person, and ditch the central plot problem in favor of the bit the critique would have written. Hardly any writer can stand up against these sorts of things for long, even if the story they’re working on isn’t at a particularly fragile point.
The trick with saboteurs is a) recognizing them, and b) avoiding them forever after. Find a different class or crit group; quit asking for comments from the unhelpfully negative friends/family. (Occasionally, they really are trying to be helpful, but unwitting sabotage is still sabotage. Most people will wait for you to ask for comments, and if you don’t, they won’t insist. If they do insist…well, that’s a giant red flag. No writer is obligated to show someone their unfinished work…or their finished work, for that matter. Even less are writers obligated to follow the advice these folks shove at them.) If one knows that one’s story is at a fragile point, it can be a good idea to actively avoid negative people and/or pushy critics. On the flip side, if the writer reacts negatively to all critique, regardless of the source, the issue may not be with the people giving the critique.
Ah, yes, the burn everything I’ve ever written phase of the writing process. I am familiar.
I don’t run into deliberate saboteurs…but those decades writing stuff up for the gummint, it wasn’t visible (other than the biography I wrote). Now I self-publish…and friends and family keep treating me some kind of amateur, which is really annoying.
Sure, with only one published short story, if anyone wants to call me a hobbyist or something in the fiction realm, that’s fair. (Not all that accurate, in my opinion, but fair.) But an amateur as a writer? Hardly.
A lot of writers need encouragement, because so much, from rejection slips to feedback, is so easily discouraging. But most people don’t realize that. Pity.
Thank you, Kevin. Based on the thoughtfulness and quality of the comments, I assumed everyone who had something to say here had bags full of published stories. Not that I am happy you have just the one, so far, but I feel better about the number of reje… sorry, I’ve noted we don’t say ‘reject’ any more… decline emails I’ve received.
Another thing our hostess’ post, and some of the comments have brought to light is that my family is wonderful. Honest, constructive, encouraging. I called one of my daughters at a fragile stage when I’d just gotten another rejection. “Mom,” she said, “at least you’re getting rejected.” Having started this writer-wanna-be thing after age 60, that was just what I needed to hear.
I was all set to jump in and say about all my self-published novels, and the award-winning *published* biography, and blah blah blah…when I realized I was feeling defensive.
I’m glad my comment encouraged you, but even now, after all these years, after all the success and praise…when my “only one published short story” phrase is the one that caught your attention, the fact that it did feels discouraging. A little discouraging.
I have very little published because I don’t want to go through the publishing rigamarole, for a number of reasons. (It takes over a year to hear back most of the time? I’m already almost ten years older than my father lived to be. I could be dead before I got accepted.)
But I’ll shut up now. Because look at that last paragraph, I got defensive all over again. (Sigh.)
I had no idea how much I needed a good writing group until I got one. Prior to the last couple of months, pretty much the only feedback I ever got was either unhelpfully positive or so in-depth and thorough that it felt overwhelmingly negative (not sabotage per se, but definitely more than my brain could handle at the time). The result was that I had to fumble through my stories on my own, trying to make them better where I could, but missing a lot of the things that were making the stories worse.
My writing group is fantastic–they take chapters I’ve already written and revised several times and point out the things I’ve missed or that don’t make sense, while also noting the places I’m doing really well. They’re very gentle about their picking-apart, and I’ve gotten a bunch of ideas from them already. (And, granted, I am setting aside the story I’ve been giving them, but only because my brain likes to write in chronological order, and there’s apparently another story that happens before this one that I need to write out first.)
I have just dragged a story off the backburner in high hopes that a Brilliant Idea will actually fix the structural problem it has.
The last time I did this, it was The Other Princess — which you can see did get kicked out the door, but only after “oh, I just add this scene” turned into three passes with major overhauls. . . .
Oops. Well, if you want the proof, check here:
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Princess-Mary-Catelli-ebook/dp/B0B8XXS4CF
“A week-three pep talk from Neil Gaiman”, e-mail to NaNoWriMo participants, 17 November 2007:
The last novel I wrote (it was Anansi Boys, in case you were wondering), when I got three-quarters of the way through, I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook, or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm―or even arguing with me―she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”
I was shocked. “You mean I’ve done this before?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not really.”
“Oh yes”, she said. “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.”
I didn’t even get to feel unique in my despair.
So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.
One word after another.
Oh, that’s fantastic! Good agent, right there!
The other thing that I would say about writer’s block is that it can be very, very subjective. By which I mean, you can have one of those days when you sit down and every word is crap. It is awful. You cannot understand how or why you are writing, what gave you the illusion or delusion that you would every have anything to say that anybody would ever want to listen to. You’re not quite sure why you’re wasting your time. And if there is one thing you’re sure of, it’s that everything that is being written that day is rubbish. I would also note that on those days (especially if deadlines and things are involved) is that I keep writing. The following day, when I actually come to look at what has been written, I will usually look at what I did the day before, and think, “That’s not quite as bad as I remember. All I need to do is delete that line and move that sentence around and its fairly usable. It’s not that bad.” What is really sad and nightmarish (and I should add, completely unfair, in every way. And I mean it — utterly, utterly, unfair!) is that two years later, or three years later, although you will remember very well, very clearly, that there was a point in this particular scene when you hit a horrible Writer’s Block from Hell, and you will also remember there was point in this particular scene where you were writing and the words dripped like magic diamonds from your fingers — as if the Gods were speaking through you and every sentence was a thing of beauty and magic and brilliance. You can remember just as clearly that there was a point in the story, in that same scene, when the characters had turned into pathetic cardboard cut-outs and nothing they said mattered at all. You remember this very, very clearly. The problem is you are now doing a reading and you cannot for the life of you remember which bits were the gifts of the Gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits were the nightmare things you just barely created and got down on paper somehow!! Which I consider most unfair. As a writer, you feel like one or the other should be better. I wouldn’t mind which. I’m not somebody who’s saying, “I really wish the stuff from the Gods was better.” I wouldn’t mind which way it went. I would just like one of them to be better. Rather than when it’s a few years later, and you’re reading the scene out loud and you don’t know, and you cannot tell. It’s obviously all written by the same person and it all gets the same kind of reaction from an audience. No one leaps up to say, “Oh look, that paragraph was clearly written on an ‘off’ day.”
It is very unfair. I don’t think anybody who isn’t a writer would ever understand how quite unfair it is.
Neil Gaiman
I wish there was a like button on here somewhere. Guess an extra comment will have to do… 🙂
I was thinking I don’t have a consistent “fragile” point… and then realized I’m struggling with exactly that, with a plot point that yes, but does that actually hold up to logic/reality? that has run the entire story aground. For over a year now. This isn’t due to a specific saboteur on this story, although a certain ex-writers group definitely made me more prone to do it to myself. But the lack of a writers group both sympathetic and focused enough to help me kick it into shape is certainly leaving me in the apply-forehead-to-brick-wall phase.