A Journey is For Every Day

Some books take years to write.

Some, surprisingly, only weeks.

Some books go through dozens of revisions, require pulling out entire plot lines, attempting complete revision, feel like resurrecting a corpse, and then you go back to an earlier version, lost two years of work, and finally figure it out.

Other books you write and do very little editing, and sell them.

It can be easy as a reader to imagine that you can tell the difference between a book that took years to write and one that took weeks.

Look at the beautiful prose, you may say.

Feel the deep themes resonating through every scene.

Look at how the patterns are mirrored here and there.

Notice the careful pacing.

Get into this character’s deepest thoughts.

The truth about writing is that authors don’t know anything about what we are doing. We don’t know if a book will touch readers. We don’t know if it will be a hit or a failure. We don’t know if all the work we did today will end up being trashed in the next month’s revision process, or if the book we are writing now is nearly perfect.

We don’t know and we shouldn’t try to discern it. I really believe that writing is a process that makes us who we are as much as it makes a book. Who we are as writers determines what books we will be able to write in the future. It has to be as much about the process as it is about the product.

To try to figure out if you’re doing anything good right now is like trying to decide if your newborn is going to end up at the Olympics. If there were a system for figuring it out, would you really want to know? Would you really want to tell your child in first grade that there was no point in joining the local city swim club because she wasn’t going to end up in the Olympics?

I hope not. I hope that for writers, and for readers, a book is a journey that we allow ourselves to go on, wherever it takes us. Yes, you can end the journey. No one forces you to either finish writing or reading a book. You may choose a different journey. But don’t confuse the journey with the destination. Destinations only happen now and again. A journey is for every day.