How Haunting It Is: Starting A New Novel
Published December 22, 2012. | By Mark Rubinstein. | Edit.
It’s always daunting to begin writing a new novel. I’m filled with questions: will I find the right voice? Will it come to me the way the others have? Will I run out of ideas? And a million others. A sense of dread pervades me, and I wonder if I’m half the writer I’ve been told I am. If I ponder these questions too long, paralytic inertia can take over.
Is it a crisis in confidence?
I don’t think so, at least not for me. It’s the usual apprehension I feel—a sense of dread—before I begin the creative trek through the minefield of the writing process. For me, it seems the natural prelude to the hard work (and the pleasure) of writing, of creating. Yes, I have a skeletal outline of the novel’s basic trajectory (or part of it) but that can never ensure full-blooded characters and a rich plot with a compelling narrative drive.
Once I barge past that feeling of immobilization, the writing assumes its own energy. Thoughts come that were never there; ideas pour onto the page. Pictures, sounds, and smells–all coming from some deep mental recess–abound, as if by some strange magic. But it’s not magic. It’s the writer’s marathon, the never-ending quest to capture in words the innermost thoughts and feelings of characters and their situations.
Will this dreadful apprehension ever leave me as I begin a new novel? I don’t think so. Is this what every writer experiences at the beginning of a new creation? I don’t know. I can only speak for myself.
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “writer’s block.” I think some people just can’t get past the fear and unwillingness to begin doing the hard work a novel demands–the brutal slog of writing.
Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House
It’s always daunting to begin writing a new novel. I’m filled with questions: will I find the right voice? Will it come to me the way the others have? Will I run out of ideas? And a million others. A sense of dread pervades me, and I wonder if I’m half the writer I’ve been told I am. If I ponder these questions too long, paralytic inertia can take over.
Is it a crisis in confidence?
I don’t think so, at least not for me. It’s the usual apprehension I feel—a sense of dread—before I begin the creative trek through the minefield of the writing process. For me, it seems the natural prelude to the hard work (and the pleasure) of writing, of creating. Yes, I have a skeletal outline of the novel’s basic trajectory (or part of it) but that can never ensure full-blooded characters and a rich plot with a compelling narrative drive.
Once I barge past that feeling of immobilization, the writing assumes its own energy. Thoughts come that were never there; ideas pour onto the page. Pictures, sounds, and smells–all coming from some deep mental recess–abound, as if by some strange magic. But it’s not magic. It’s the writer’s marathon, the never-ending quest to capture in words the innermost thoughts and feelings of characters and their situations.
Will this dreadful apprehension ever leave me as I begin a new novel? I don’t think so. Is this what every writer experiences at the beginning of a new creation? I don’t know. I can only speak for myself.
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “writer’s block.” I think some people just can’t get past the fear and unwillingness to begin doing the hard work a novel demands–the brutal slog of writing.
Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House
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