After weeks of pressing toward a deadline, I finally, in near exhaustion, submitted my second novel to my publisher. That was about four months ago. I was SO happy to get the book off my plate and spent a week or two just slumming. Now I can’t wait to get back to edits. I’m rejuvenated, more exited about my story than before, and have a much better “perspective” on it too.
Amazing what some distance between you and your novel can do.
It’s also amazing how many novelists rush from the lab to distribution.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King advises the novelist, after her first draft, to… chill.
You’ve done a lot of work and you need a period of time (how much or how little depend on the individual writer) to rest. Your mind and imagination — two things which are related, but not really the same — have to recycle themselves, at least in regard to this one particular work. My advice is that you take a couple of days off — go fishing, go kayaking, do a jigsaw puzzle — and then go to work on something else. Something’s that’s shorter, preferably, and something that’s a complete change of direction and pace from your newly finished book.
How long you let your book rest — sort of like bread dough between kneadings — is entirely up to you, but I think it should be a minimum of six weeks.
Two things stand out to me about King’s counsel. One is how beneficial such a practice can be for an author and the second is how many authors don’t seem to practice it. Instead, the pattern seems to be: Hammer away, meet deadline, swoon, and vow to never write again. (And then there’s those “Write a Novel in 90 Days” folks who calculate zero distance between the author and her story. After all, you can’t keep the assembly line rolling if you keep shutting down the mill for R&R.)
For those who aspire to this design, how do you know it’s time to take up your novel again?
…you’re not ready to go back to the old project until you’ve gotten so involved in a new one (or re-involved in your day-t0-day life) that you’ve almost forgotten the unreal estate that took up three hours of your every morning or afternoon for a period of three or five or seven months.
When you come to the correct evening (which you well may have marked on your office calendar), take your manuscript out of the drawer. If it looks like an alien relic bought at a junk-shop or yard sale where you can hardly remember stopping, you’re ready.
In this era of ePublishing, rushing books to press is status quo. Why let your story “age” when your friends can be imbibing by nightfall? To many, King’s recommendations probably seem as defunct as his first typewriter.
Nevertheless, it makes me wonder: Perhaps the difference between a good book and a not-so-good book is not how much time the author spends on the piece, but how much time she spends away from it.
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QUESTION: Do you think the changes in the publishing industry militate against such advice and tempt authors to hurry novels through rather than let them “ferment”? Do you think it’s possible to get “too close” or “too involved” in your novel? Has putting some distance between you and your novel benefited you and your story?
My first novel (still unpublished) I wrote off and on over about six years with numerous revisions. In 2010, I was visiting with it too much and put it away last July to come back to this year and look at with a very fresh set of eyes.
I guess the difference for me is I’m not in a big hurry to go speeding toward publication and I have the ability (luxury, published authors call it) to take my time. I’m working on a new manuscript, my goal to improve from finishing in 6 years to finishing the rough draft in 1 year. Then I will put that one away and start the third in that series.
But I think 6-8 weeks is a good rule of thumb to set a work aside. Longer if you’ve already revised it a mllion times (which was my case). But some people don’t need (or want) that distance. And it probably depends on what kind of books you’re writing too.
I do believe it is possible to get too close or too involved with your work. Particularly from the standpoint of believing it to be better than it actually is. Revisions seem to be much easier after some fermentation time. I’m speaking as an unpublished writer, but what you are saying absolutely resonates with what I have seen and done.
In my own writing the thing I have found the most dangerous is taking a break before it is done. I have one work that I have been working on off and on (mostly off) for over 20 years. As a result, when I pull it out to work on it I re-read it and end up revising it before I add to it. I have completely changed the method and characters three times (though the plot has absolutely been the same since it’s based on a little known historical occurence). The good thing is that I have used this experience to train me to not re-read or re-write until I have finished. I am itching to revise my current work in progress, except that I won’t break my rule. I suspect that my fermentation period from end of first draft to start of second will be short.
Just to be pointlessly contrary, I’ll point out that Max Brand made a lot of money without resting or even returning to his drafts. The fellow ended up making $3,000 per week in Hollywood during the Depression, he was so prolific. Died young in WWII and still wrote so much publishable stuff that new, unpublished stuff of his is still coming out twice a year, more than a half-century after he died.
Read even one of his lesser works, and the words rocket off the page.
An estimated lifetime of 30,000,000+ words didn’t leave much room for rest!
But he was really weird.
And, to be even more contrary, I’m pretty sure King forgot to rest From a Buick 8 for the six-week minimum!
That’s funny about the Buick 8 thing.
And don’t get me wrong, for the rest of us mortals, that Sabbath is an important thing, if not for the sake of the work, than for the sake of the worker.
I wrote my first novel in three months. That was almost exactly four years ago. It is just now getting published (next week!). If you had told me that it would be four years way-back-when, I probably would have cried. Probably would have said, “Well, screw this writing thing. I do NOT have the patience,” and given up.
During those four years, however, I had plenty of time to step away from my novel. Part of that was spent getting involved in other writing projects, and all of it was focused on getting better at craft. Each time I went back to my original manuscript I would nearly die of embarrassment over things I found in it.
I think we *must* step away from our writing. The longer the manuscript, the longer the break, too. A short story can be tucked away for just a couple of weeks, or even a few days, in order to be able to see it with fresh eyes. But a novel….weeks. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. It all depends on the manuscript itself and the writer. I doubt I’ll need as many revisions or breaks with my next novel, but I surely have learned that it simply can’t be rushed.
I suppose the real answer to the question, “should authors step away for awhile…” depends on the author. For myself, I agree with Jonathan. Fermentation time is necessary. Kind of like wine, now that the analogy has been started. Do you want wine or do you want grape juice?
Aw, the best of my work is a bottle of Yoo-Hoo. I’ve got to get it out to readers before they realize they just paid me for some brown sugar water.
My problem is partially rooted in the fact that my work is always in the back of my head. I can’t leave it at the computer any more than I can leave thoughts of my family after I hang up the phone or pull out of their Indiana driveway.
I would dearly love to step away from it, and have been endeavouring to undertake other projects in an effort to dilute my creative focus enough to render the stories less all-consuming. Sometimes it works; other times it doesn’t.
As to the effect modern publishing methods are having on the types and quality of work available I truly think that after all the ZOMG! stories about Hocking et. al. making sixty gajillion rupees via selfpubs dies down we’ll be back to a world where there is less debris washing up on the shores. Selfpub fiction is at a place now where blogging was about 6-7 years ago. Some enterprising early adopter comes along and makes a fairly good nut after putting a lot of hard work and cultivation into the process. The money draws the attention of those who sell stories to “news” outlets and next thing you know everyone with a marginal interest in writing, access to a computer and varying degrees of talent pile on in hopes that they, too, will be able to make a living at this instead of processing TPS reports in a cubicle. As soon as the masses realise that most of the people who’ve come to Deadwood are either broke, drunk or making a killing by preying on them instead of paying them they’ll move on to the next get-rich-at-home scheme.
It won’t have much more of an effect on decent writers and good stories than any other shift in medium.
I love Stephen King for so many reasons.
Just thought I’d say that out loud.
I wrote this short story called “Chain Saw” about nine years ago. http://leahschouten.blogspot.com/2011/07/chain-saw.html At the time I didn’t think it was good, but when I looked at years later and made some revisions I was happy with it. Maybe resting for a while after doing almost ANY creative work is beneficial; we can get too close to our work and somehow miss important aspects of how to make it our greatest work possible.
I know what you mean about exhaustion. I’m trying to finish my 3rd novel and it seems I never will.