Awkward First Novels

Think Tank #37

I’ve always wanted to write something different.

Since I decided that I wanted to write a book, which was about five years ago at this point, I decided that I didn’t want to write just any book.

It had to be something unique. A game-changer. A story that no one had never seen before.

I thought about it and talked about it for two and a half years, and I sat down and wrote it (sporadically at first) for two and a half more. Now, the thing is mostly finished. This should (hopefully) be my final edit, which means that I have to sit down and read it knowing that this is basically as good as it’s gonna get.

In short, I pulled it off. I wrote a book completely unlike anything I’ve read before.

I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last few weeks. I always claimed to be a reader, but the two-and-a-half-plus years I spent on this book were pretty stale as far as my ‘reading life’ was concerned. I read a few boring books that I didn’t really enjoy. I read through George Orwell’s entire bibliography for a project that I eventually abandoned.

What I learned from this is that a story is supposed to have an agenda. You’re supposed to tell the reader exactly what you want them to know, which should ideally be something very, very important.

Well, now I’m reading some actual fiction, and I learned that stories typically follow a formula. Yeah, I know. Should’ve paid attention in seventh grade English class, right? It’s the kind of thing you learn and then forget, once it seems somehow too obvious to be true.

It’s dumb. If you try to reinvent the wheel, the only way it will work is if you happen to stumble upon the exact same design.

The reason stories are structured the way they are is because they work. They keep the pages turning, make a reader feel something. The point of writing a story isn’t to stuff an ideology into a piece of fiction in the vain hope that it’ll sell, or to show off to the reader how intelligent and unique you are. It’s to communicate something that can’t be said outright.

I think the reason I wanted to be ‘different’ so badly was because creating something one of a kind would ensure that there was nothing to compare it to. Ironically, this idea was probably the most profound work of fiction that I’ve created to date.

Maybe some unseen spiritual force was looking out for me by preventing me from reading a single book worth reading for so long. If I’d had this epiphany a year ago, I would never have finished this book.

After all, I’m probably being unnecessarily harsh on my awkward little novel. Sometimes I think it’s actually pretty good. It’s got a cool concept. I like a few of the characters. It grapples with some interesting themes.

But it’s not the masterpiece I’d intended it to be. Masterpieces aren’t full of themselves. They’re not afraid to be compared.

And they tend to follow the formula.