Should You Give Up On Your Novel?

Maybe you’ve been writing a draft of a novel for the last three years and it’s still not sounding like Falkner or Atwood or, well, any published book, so you’re ready to give up. Or maybe you haven’t even barely started. You’re just dabbling, taking big breaks in between writing it, worried it might be a waste of time. Or maybe you’re writing consistently, but jumping from shiny new idea to shiny new idea, like I’ve done in the past, certain that the most recent idea has a better chance of being published.

Today I have a challenge for all of us: let’s keep writing, but focus on joy, not publication. This way, when our novels are published, it’s a bonus.

Instead of worrying about whether your novel will be good enough, I think there’s a better question to ask: Am I pursuing joy every time I write?

Even Paul Engle, the founder of the Writers Workshop in Iowa, told Kurt Vonnegut that he wanted to inscribe over the building’s entrance: “Don’t take it all so seriously.”

That’s the strange thing about writing a novel: people think that it’s possible to make a lot of money so they pursue publication with this anxious sort of fever instead of focusing on why they love writing stories in the first place….because it’s fun.

This is your time for your imagination to play.

People draw, play the guitar, collage, or take pictures without asking themselves if they can make a ton of money doing it, and yet, somehow, when they write a novel, they get focused on externals like publication. They join writers groups before they’re ready and allow themselves to get critiqued and torn apart when they don’t even have a first draft. Their tender creative baby belly is exposed and they don’t even understand how much they’re hurting their own possibilities for creative joy.

First and foremost, let’s write because it makes us happy.

You might be scoffing right now. Yeah right, lady! I got bills to pay.

I’m being real here: writing is no way to pay bills. That’s what a day job is for. There are a million better ways to make money.

But does it make any sense to spend time writing if you aren’t guaranteed a publishing deal? What about all that time away from the kids? Or lost revenue from work? What if I spend a year of my life on this project and nobody wants to publish it?

These are very common worries, especially for working parents who have a dream to publish a novel. But I think it’s best to think of writing a novel as that time we give to ourselves. For us parents, writing fiction helps us remember who we are at our core: an imaginative playful kid who loves to tell stories. Work, life and even our own children sometimes suck us dry. Writing is a way to keep a piece of ourselves sacred.

Everybody, even parents, deserve a creative break.

If we aim for creative joy when we write, the writing is its own reward and it will add to every area of our lives, including our parenting life because it will cascade like a joy waterfall over our entire family. (Or something like that.)

Besides this joy waterfall, there are so many other benefits to writing a novel besides publication. Storytelling is a key life skill, useful in every occupation and situation, and it makes life more fun. It will never be a waste of time, and really, come on now, we waste time on so many other things: television, social media, endless news cycles and hanging out with people we don’t like. It will never be a waste of time. In fact, writing is a fabulous way to SPEND time.

Start with just fifteen minutes a day. You’ve got this.

It’s time to play.