Why Novel Writing Sucks.
Perhaps it’s simply my personal style, lack of discipline, or in-built literary prejudices, but this entire novel writing process sucks the big one. (The big what I’ll leave to your own imagination.)
Here are some of the problems:
1) The very length of the damn thing is tiresome. I’m a goal oriented writer, who’s first and foremost goal is getting the freakin’ project finished and letting other people read it. I’ve had massive trouble in the past with 5,000 word short stories, and the idea of hitting the 5k mark (a biggie in my story-centric mindset) and not even being 1/20th of the way home is horrifying in a vaugely Lovecraftian indescribable dread sort of way. My entire self education as a writer has been in compressing and trunctating image and description, not expanding on it. The whole enterprise rubs my fur the wrong way.
2)The whole damn thing is so diffuse and un-focused. While this may simply be my lack of skill, I find this is also a problem with reading novels. No novel I’ve ever read has packed a fraction of the punch of a good short story ( Sturgeon’s A Saucer Of Loneliness for example, or Lafferty’s All Pieces Of River Shore). In my mind, a ‘proper’ literary work should be concluded in a single sitting, and leave the reader with a fluttery gut, leaky eyes, or a big smile. Hopefully all three.
3) In many ways, I am the anti Orson Scott Card. In contrast to his rather sadistic nature towards his characters, I find myself loath to do bad things to these imaginary people I invented. While this isn’t a big deal in a short story, it’s mighty boring in longer works. In a novel, which I once read described as the process of putting a likable character into a tree then throwing rocks at him, it’s a nightmare. Hell, I can’t even play real time strategy games, because I refuse to throw the proper amount of troops at the enemy. The very idea of being so callous with people — yes, even the symbols for people — disgusts and disturbs me.
4) My fourth grade teacher once told me: “You are a poet, Mr. Potter. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.” And, despite the fact that poetry has been my least ’serious’ outlet, I’ve never doubted that to be true. Poetry is the art of compression. A novel that attempts to be poetic most often just turns into a huge, florid, eye-rolling catastrophe. It’s possible, of course, but most of the time, if a novel is described as ‘poetic’, it’s a nice way to say “pretentious”. Novels, by their very nature, are more about plot than words.
I’m still plugging away, and will continue to do so. Every so often I get into the groove and have a nice run of it. But for the most part, novel-writing has been a pretty crappy experience. If I do manage to finish this one, I doubt I’ll attempt another.
