Writing Fast, Writing Slow

Plus—today and tomorrow only!—a massive Prime Day Discount on Accountable

Last month, I went to the book launch for Jandy Nelson’s marvelous new novel, When The World Tips Over. Jandy was in conversation with her friend and neighbor (the two share a duplex in San Francisco), Nina LaCour, who kept trying to keep the focus on Jandy while Jandy kept trying to turn the spotlight on Nina. It was all very wonderful, in the way that being in the presence of two incandescent writers who are also dear friends can be. I particularly enjoyed hearing them talk about the writing process because they’re both experienced enough to know that there is no single right way to write a book, which is something I keep forgetting. The best any of us can hope for is that we might discover the way to write one particular book, knowing that everything that worked like a dream for the last book might turn out to be a dismal failure the next time around.

I used to hate hearing writers talk about their writing habits because it always made me feel like I was doing it wrong. I don’t get up at 5 am to write and I don’t write into the wee hours. I don’t have a beautiful work space filled with antiques and a view of the mountains or the sea. My desk is a mess, the floor of my study is stacked with books and boxes and things I haven’t unpacked from my last trip, and my window has an unobstructed view of parked cars and garbage cans. I don’t light a candle or listen to inspiring music or write in long hand or any of the other quaint and glamorous things other writers seem to do. Nor am I the kind of sturdy, unbothered writer who dashes off chapters on airplanes or between panels at conferences or in the middle of the night during bouts of insomnia. My work habits vary depending on my schedule but I tend not to write if I’m sleep-deprived or jet-lagged or—as I’ve written in this newsletter before—on vacation.

Despite all this, I’ve somehow reached the point in my writing career where hearing other writers talk about their habits no longer makes me feel like an abject failure. Instead, learning about other writers’ writing habits has come to feel like learning about their favorite weeknight recipes or their sex lives. Maybe I’ll walk away with something useful, maybe not, but either way I’m getting a peek inside an intimate part of their lives that most of us rarely talk about. Hearing about another writer’s approach is a good reminder that there are other approaches, and that one of them might offer a path through whatever muddle I’m currently trying to write my way out of.

Jandy took ten years to write When the World Tips Over, writing way more pages and plot lines than she could possibly include. If you’re a writer with as passionate a fan base as she has, and if you write for an audience that can age out of your books fairly quickly, taking that long to write a book is an act of true bravery. She wrote the book she wanted to write, at the pace that the book required, and that makes her an absolute queen.

I say that because, in our current publishing climate, it’s hard not to feel that you should have a new book out every year—if not more. Audiences want more of what they like. Publishers want more product to sell. People are impressed by prolificacy, which means that they are impressed by speed.

(This trend is perhaps best encapsulated by National Novel Writing Month, which encourages people to draft an entire fucking novel in the month of November. November! A month in which a whole week is gobbled up by Thanksgiving! I suspect that this bizarre tradition was not invented by a woman with children.)

Hearing Jandy talk about her novel’s ten year journey was thus unexpectedly affirming. Books take time! Writing can be slow and meandering and frustrating. My first novel, The Wishing Box, took me ten years to write. I remember a bookseller writing me a thank you card after I did an event for that book in which she begged me not to make her wait ten years for the next one. I’m sure she didn’t mean it literally; in fact, I doubt she remembered me or my first novel ten minutes after writing that card. Still, I still feel like I’ve let her down, 24 years later, by never having written another novel for adults.

At the time, however, I was sure my next novel would be out in no time. It might have taken me ten years to figure out how to write my first novel, but now I knew! Next time would be easier. And faster.

And then, life happened. I had a baby the same year my novel came out, and then I started to write children’s picture books. I left my staff writing job at a newspaper to freelance and discovered that being a freelance reporter meant being constantly on deadline for a variety of editors instead of only one. When I finally wrote another novel, it was a fantasy for children, The Book of Fatal Errors, and it had taken me ten years to write.

But that was because I was learning how to write a novel for children! Next time would be easier. And faster!

As it turned out, I was able to write the sequel in a year.

Aha, I thought, I have cracked the code! From now on, I would be a fast writer. After all, the writing portion of my two nonfiction narratives, The 57 Bus and Accountable, had taken very little time, even if the reporting had taken years. I now had five novel-length books under my belt, so I figured I knew a thing or two about how to write them. Plus I had friends who were dashing off novels at a frenetic pace. If they could do it, surely I could too.

My next novel, I vowed, would be written fast. I would outline. I would set daily word count goals. I would dash off a messy first draft, revise the hell out of it, and then have a shiny new book on bookstore shelves in no time.

Unfortunately, my next novel does not want to be written fast. I’ve tried to write it fast, but the result is a sloppy bloated monster of a book that keeps wriggling out of the sleek outline I wrote for it at the start and lumbering in a new direction. Will it take me ten years to finish it? I have no idea. But after hearing Jandy and Nina’s conversation, I’ve felt a less inclined to force it to race like a thoroughbred and more inclined to let it dawdle along like a very portly donkey.

That’s just this book though. The next one, I’m certain, will be faster.

Accountable Is A Prime Day Editor’s Pick

That means you can pick up a copy for a measly nine bucks on October 8 or 9. The audiobook is just 99 cents!

Or, if you prefer to support your local indie, celebrate anti-Prime Day by getting free shipping when you order Accountable or any of my other books from bookshop.org.

In Other News

• The audiobook of Escargot is part of this amazing Spotify Picture Book playlist. So many incredible picture books in one place!

• My German publisher did an interview with me (in English) about The 57 Bus and you can watch it here.

• I swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco last month for the first time and it was pretty amazing. Here I am at the finish line.

  

I bow to you,

Dashka