Some thirty-plus years ago, shortly after I sold my second novel and was well on my way to writing my third, I met up with a college friend whom I hadn’t seen since graduation. We talked a bit about what we’d done; I mentioned that my first novel was out; and we arranged to meet again the following week. When we did, he proudly showed me the first three pages of the mystery novel he had just started. I made what I considered to be suitably supportive and encouraging noises, and we parted ways. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t written a word of fiction since.
Some fifteen years later, that friend provided me with a slim, self-published volume of “personal essays” – basically a somewhat disconnected memoir – that represented the entirety of his writing output since he first showed me the opening to his never-continued mystery novel. In the same period, I had published eleven more novels (not counting the ones in process at our previous meeting) and a bunch of short stories.
My college friend is the personification of the saying, “He’s more interested in showing off than in showing up.” I won’t say that, somewhere in his heart of hearts, he didn’t desire to write, but his actions made it pretty clear that writing wasn’t really a priority for him. He showed no interest in writing at all until I showed up with a published novel; he immediately started a novel … and, as far as I know, only ever wrote the first three pages he immediately showed off to me. He eventually decided that essays were more his thing – he knew how to write those after all the college essays – but he still didn’t manage to produce very many, and he decided to self-publish just enough copies to give away to friends and family … essentially showing off to people he wanted to impress.
His trouble was, showing off only works if the thing one is showing is impressive enough to generate the kind of response one is hoping to get. The only ways to create a really impressive thing to show off are a) to have massive amounts of pre-existing talent; b) to work really hard at acquiring the skills to make something impressive; or c) both of the above (because if one already has massive amounts of pre-existing talent, most of the people one wants to impress will probably already know about it, which means they will expect it to be impressive … and that means the thing will need to really knock their socks off).
In other words, no matter where one starts from, producing something impressive is going to require the willingness to put in the work and the discipline to actually put in that work.
This scenario – and that telltale description, “more interested in showing off than showing up” – is at the heart of some people’s advice to would-be writers, that they shouldn’t show their unfinished work to anyone until it is finished – and polished to the best shape they can get it in. On the one hand, it’s a way of separating the people who want to write from the people who just want to have written; on the other, it prevents good writers who have potential from getting so much praise for unfinished work that they never bother to complete it (like my friend’s first-three-pages, which, as I remember, were a perfectly fine opening that never went anywhere).
The trouble is that there are two kinds of writers who really want praise for their unfinished stuff. There are the ones who want to show off, and if a cool idea or a spiffy chapter or two can get them the praise they want, they don’t need to write anything else. But there are also writers whose confidence in their own writing fades and who need bucking up somewhere in mid-book, or who feed on the positive reaction of beta readers who say “What happens next? I want more!”
An appreciative – or even just a persistently curious – audience can prod a would-be writer into finishing. It took me nearly four years to write the first half of my first novel. It took me about eight months to write the second half, and one large reason was that a friend discovered that I was working on it and demanded to be allowed to read it. “But I only read finished work,” he told me. “So you have to finish it.” And then, every time he saw me for eight months (which was about once a week, because we were in the same gaming group), he asked how my book was coming and when he would be able to read it. It became easier to finish than to keep putting him off!
For me, having that audience helped me do the work of showing up – writing regularly to Get The Thing Done – for my first novel. After I’d done it once, I didn’t need the audience so much. I know at least two other professional writers, though, who depend heavily on encouragement from their beta readers to get through their first drafts. They aren’t showing off – they don’t need to. They are motivating themselves to show up … and for them, it clearly works. They each have a shelf of professionally published novels to show for their last twenty or so years of writing. Unlike my college friend, who still has one slim self-published collection of essays, and possibly the first three pages of a mystery novel floating around his house somewhere.
On the other hand, there’s the Thing that’s so horrible and shameful that you don’t dare show it to anyone. I’ve got one of those started at the “blocked out and the first draft begun” stage.
I will say that showing up at the page every day is a resolution I’ve managed to keep this year (knock wood). The rolling rewrite is still painfully slow, but I tell myself it would be much worse if I didn’t.
Oh, I think we would all like to hear our stories are the most wonderful thing ever.
Amen to that! ?
I don’t let anyone read my first draft (with the new exception of sending bits of scenes to my best friend because I’m too giddy to keep them to myself). But I wish I’d learned sooner to find readers for subsequent drafts—I’ve had more progress after one in depth conversation with a critique partner than after several drafts without outside feedback.
I sent the second draft to several people who said they really wanted to read it. I never heard back from anyone except my agent, who said he was frightfully busy (this was in about March) but the first couple of chapters were slow. I intend to wait till New Year’s Eve (he’s in New York, so it’ll be 2022 for him) and ask him if he ever got any further with it, or should I just slam it onto the webpage and forget about it?
I will go around three sides of a square to avoid being accused of showing off. Comes of having been the smartest kid in the eighth grade, but not smart enough to keep quiet about it.
“The trouble is that there are two kinds of writers who really want praise for their unfinished stuff. There are the ones who want to show off, and if a cool idea or a spiffy chapter or two can get them the praise they want, they don’t need to write anything else. But there are also writers whose confidence in their own writing fades and who need bucking up somewhere in mid-book, or who feed on the positive reaction of beta readers…”
This to me was the key section of the entry. Kudos for including it!!
Perhaps we need an article, some time, on the phenomenon I’ve seen described as “I don’t wanna do this because I know I’ll screw it up.” I currently have a short conversation between two of the principals that needs to be moved a couple of chapters back and expanded on, and I don’t wanna do it because….
There might be an element of this in my own rewrite slog. I have a number of scenes and conversations that I need to move back (or forward) and it’s slow going. Maybe “I don’t wanna do it because I know I’ll screw it up. After all, I provably did screw it up in the first draft, or else I wouldn’t need to make the change” is the big drag here, or at least one of them.
Hey, do it anyway. Easy for me to say, I know, but I’ve gone back and looked at a couple of my first drafts from the mid-70s, and they’re *terrible*! They’re darned near illiterate! I was still trying to string sentences together, and I clearly needed a tone of practice.
Which, looking back, I eventually got. So I recommend trying it anyway. If it looks hopeless still in revisions, hold onto it and do something else. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you can do it right, and you’ll have a draft to work from right there!
Shoot, I’ve got an attempt at a novel from I think 1992 still lying around, and I’m still thinking I’ll tackle it again sometime.
[Note: This praise is intended as encouragement, for bucking up. ;)]
This is unrelated, but one of my best friends is in need of some writing advice. She says: “I have vague ideas, or scenes, or a few lines of dialogue about a given idea, which I try to make notes of as they come. But I don’t know how or have the words to actually write it or string some words together.”
This bothers her a lot, and it’s not a problem I’ve personally experienced, so I don’t know what kind of advice to give her. Pat, could you possibly do a post on this sometime?
How much reading does your friend do? Sometimes by reading a whole lot in a given genre, you can pick up a few tactics by osmosis.
I get the impression that she doesn’t read as much as she’d like to, due to anxiety and stress making it hard to focus.