Novel Lessons 1: The Desert of Souls

I’d like to think that I learn a little more about writing with every book, and I thought that it might be useful to my fellow writers if I shared what I’ve learned… often the hard way.

Before I ever got to the first published novel I had at least five others that didn’t make the cut. I write “at least” because three of those five were rewritten numerous times, sometimes nearly from scratch, so maybe the total is more like ten or twelve. Yeah, that many.

I am reminded of what I heard as a creative writing minor in college when a published author dropped by to talk to us. He said that it might take us multiple novels before we got published, and he cited a figure close to ten, because that’s how long it had taken him. I remember thinking to myself that I would certainly figure things out faster. Hah! The arrogance and optimism of youth. I sure thought I was special (even as I was brimming with insecurities that I really wasn’t). Would I have stuck with it so long if I’d known success wasn’t waiting around the corner? What if I’d known the advice I later heard, about having to put in about 10,000 hours before you were good enough to be professional with a skill? I think that little gem is probably pretty accurate for most of us, as it turns out.

Probably I’d still have kept at it. I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller, even if I thought I had more of a natural knack that wouldn’t require quite so much time to get right. Of course, some people get it right the first time out of the gate and win first place as well, like Lynch and Rothfuss. That’s not me, alas. Maybe you are, but the odds are that you’re not. Sorry about that, but if you’re writing your first novel it might help to approach it realistically. Or maybe to write your first one when you’re a more seasoned human being, because some of my challenge was that I hadn’t experienced enough life to write a convincing novel when I was in my 20s.

So what did I learn in the writing of my first published novel, The Desert of Souls?

A number of lessons, really, and some I didn’t fully understand until I completed the second published novel.

First, I learned that I should write what I was most excited about writing, which at that time was about my characters Dabir and Asim. I’d been writing short stories about them for nearly ten years, reading all about the period and region and time they were from that whole long while. But I’d been putting off  a novel about them because I thought no one would want to read a historical fantasy novel with Arabian heroes. It turned out I was right, sadly, for not enough people read it to keep the series going, but I was wrong in the short term, because my passion and skill showed through and got me that book contract.

Second, what I didn’t understand was that because I knew the characters so very well that the writing was easy. In my spare time I ended up writing a novel in about a year, with very few revisions. At least one of the chapters reads almost exactly as I wrote it in the rough draft. That was deceptive for me, because I thought all novel writing would be like that. Later I understood that it came from knowing the characters and their reactions like the back of my hand.

Third, I thought all I needed was a simple outline, because writing that book was so easy. I was wrong there, but that simple outline was just right for that book, which went exactly where I wanted it to go even if it still surprised me sometimes. I trusted my instincts, which is something I lost sight of for a little while in later books.

I guess a related lesson is that if you know your characters and their motivations (not just the protagonists, but the villains as well) everything else falls into place far more easily. I think that’s the way Harold Lamb wrote. I wish more record of his writing process survived. All we have are a few comments here and there that he made, stating that he really didn’t like redrafting very much. As his plots rely upon collisions between motivations, I’ve come to think that his secret relies upon knowing his protagonists and antagonists, and their abilities and failings. He then set them against each other. Partly unconsciously, that’s exactly what I did in The Desert of Souls.

It would be a little while before I figured out how to write another as efficiently. Next week I’ll look at one of my favorite of my books, and one of the hardest to write, The Bones of the Old Ones.