How to Start Again
Who isn’t desperate for a new start? Anybody think that’s still possible at this point? I don’t want to sound hopeless, just honestly curious. Planning on the bigger picture ever returning to normal feels like a mental trap. I’m ready to adapt now, be grateful for things I do have some control over.
Writing has always been like a little candlelight of hope in the darkness for me. Whenever life felt too shitty, I could always turn to my imagination, which eventually turned into the hope of becoming an honest-to-gosh career novelist. I try not to openly lean into dreams so much anymore, dreams are too escapist, a result of privilege, perhaps. I’m trying to focus more on the doing, on the making the thing happen, on the never giving up, even during times that have felt harder and harder to overcome.
I think if you look back over my entries of 2020, you can see a clear and obvious decline - both in hope and probably sanity. I used to approach this blog with a particular mask on, I always wrote these silly entries with an eye towards professionalism and easy-to-digestibility. Not to be too on the nose with metaphors, but you can definitely sense that mask slipping throughout 2020, as I caved more towards a weird sort of desperate authenticity. That said, as I approach this new chapter of the writing journey, I think I’ll stay in that mode. I’m just acknowledging it for the record.
But we’re not here to ruminate on the failures of the past year, we’re here to commit to the work of starting again. I want to remind my readers again that I’m thus far not very successful at this game, but I have crammed a lot of word count into the last five or so years since I began taking novel writing seriously, so please take any advice you may find in here as nothing more than me repeating back to myself the lessons I’ve learned. This month’s topic will be about the first thing a writer needs to start, whether for the first time or the last time, and that is an idea. But before we crack into it, as always, let me get my monthly writing updates out of the way.
Let me be honest and start by saying that this period has been the least productive time I’ve had in years. I can feel the absence of writing actually wearing away at my soul - I know that sounds pretentious and dramatic, but I genuinely feel like a more withered person for not continuing to write in spite of everything. Then I remember why it is I haven’t been writing, and it’s so fucking trivial, but it all comes down to the fact that my laptop needs repairs - it still functions, but now it comes with worry and anxiety every time I sit down to use it, and anxiety has always been one of my biggest obstacles. It’s sad and gross how we treat these devices as our home in so many ways. This laptop was where I lived throughout 2020, and when it started failing on me, it was like some great upheaval. Pathetic. Money has become tight again since about three quarters through last year, but I’ll be aiming to get it fixed between this blog entry and the next.
Still, I haven’t been doing nothing. I ordered some notebooks and pens, though I haven’t committed to them yet (my handwriting is so godawful, it always has been). Switching up the medium is supposed to help jog the creativity, so they say, I’ll let you know next month if that works out. What I’ve mostly been doing is a lot of outlining and research. Nothing too intensive, I haven’t been pouring over books in a library or anything, but I’ve definitely been putting most of my time into thinking things through for my next (current?) work in progress. Now that I’ve brought it up, let’s swing into the topic at hand.
Where do ideas come from? How do you know if your’s is any good? I think these are some pretty common questions, and I’m going to do my best to provide my insights solely based on my observations, various pieces of advice I’ve picked up, and the methods I’m gambling on myself.
The first thing that makes a solid idea for a book - or anything really - is an idea with specific intent behind it. Trite but true, creativity is problem solving at its heart, and if you can be honest about the problem you’re trying to solve, then you’re making a good start. Even with stories, one should be clear about what one is attempting to accomplish. As with the outlining process, once you have a clear destination in mind, you can sculpt your core idea around taking you there, and you can carve a path that best leads to that destination.
If you want to be published, you must understand publishing. Like every other novelist before me, I struggled with this fact for a great deal of time, but it’s ultimately the truth. Something that I realized over time is that you must be prepared for what your central idea will say about you. You must be clear-eyed about who you’re trying to reach and why. This takes research, familiarity, and as many attempts as necessary until it becomes ingrained. In the case of traditionally published novels, one must pick a genre and an audience, be aware of trends in the industry, what’s working, what’s on it’s way out. If you’re new to this, you may think this stifles your creativity, but you’ll be happy to know that creativity thrives within confines, so lean the fuck in, or be prepared to lose years treading water like the dummy writing these words.
Even with the above criteria in your sights, there is another crucial ingredient: One must be authentic with their writing. But what does that mean, really? It can be surprisingly hard to figure that out, especially in the modern era where such a great deal of focus is on identity (and rightfully so, as more doors open for more people). I’ve struggled with this myself quite a bit. Yet at the core of it is something quite simple, and I thus far believe it to be the best barometer of authenticity, and that is passion. If your idea doesn’t fill you with honest passion, then there might be something missing, a piece of you, perhaps.
Once you do manage to forge an idea, you shouldn’t become complacent with it, or cast it in bronze. Your idea must be challenged with other ideas that will inevitably come to mind. The core idea must remain maleable, yet strong enough to carry the weight of the budding story. I’ve seen this advice countless times, so I’ll repeat it here: whenever you’re coming up with an idea for anything (whether it be the central premise of the book, or any of the countless smaller decisions that will make up the process of writing it) challenge yourself to write out a list of several options; this will inevitably push you to come up with unique concepts and to view your concepts from multiple angles, you might even be able to mix and match to get the best of multiple iterations.
All in all, take it seriously, think it through, but don’t get caught flat-footed. Know yourself and know your goals. Keep in mind that overthinking is also a legitimate danger, one that I’ve fallen into in the past and am trying to stay above given my current circumstances. I hope this advice will help inspire you for whatever journey you’re about to begin, whether it be writing or something else. I’ll let you know how it works out for me, but with any luck, the results will hopefully one day speak for themselves. I suppose we’ll see - but regardless, thank you for reading.
