It took me two decades to find a modicum of confidence as a writer. (Or four if you count all the years when I was writing, but without a goal of someday becoming a published writer.) Hidden away on a hard drive somewhere are dozens of short stories, four novels and one sad screenplay – more than a million words – that have been retroactively classified as “practice” writing.
They didn’t start out that way.
I didn’t sit down to write a practice novel. I sat down to write a novel.
Driven by hope and madness, I started putting one word after another. Some days I felt certain, most days I felt lost. But I kept at it, word by word, until I came to an ending place. Sometimes the ending place was the realization that the story was awful. Sometimes the ending place was reluctant acceptance that the story just didn’t work. And on rare occasions, the ending place was unmerited hope that I had really done it: I had written something publishable.
But in every case during those twenty years, the final resting place after the ending place was a dusty computer folder labeled “old stories.”
Then, six years or so ago, I wrote another novel. When I reached the ending place on this one, I felt something strange. Confidence. I liked what I had written. And I knew it was good. Maybe not great, but worthy of an audience. So I revised until my fingers bled, then started querying agents. Just a few, really, but it was a big step. I didn’t get any offers of representation, but I did get some encouraging words about my writing voice.
My writing voice.
That’s when I realized the purpose of all those abandoned words. I needed them to find my voice. Yeah, yeah, I know – some writers find it in their first book. (We hates them.) It took me a million. And once I’d found my voice, I also found that modicum of confidence. Granted, a writer’s confidence is a fickle thing – all it takes is one damning review to dismantle it. But I’d tasted confidence, and now I knew the recipe to find it again. Which I did when I wrote (and eventually self-published) Stolen Things. (It’s a good book. The kind you can read more than once. Trust me on this.)
I’ve been writing my current novel (working title: Beautiful Sky, Beautiful Sky) for almost three years now. It was supposed to be finished a while ago, but as some of you know, I took on the awesome responsibility of raising my granddaughter, Harper, nearly two years ago. Single parenting a six-year-old is hard work. Single-parenting a six-year-old when you’re 58 and clutter-phobic and she’s smart and talented and a never-ending ball of energy as eager to learn as she is to get all the toys out at once is…well…harder work. And yes, a joy, too. Of course. At the end of the day, after spending every available hour editing other people’s books when Harper’s at school or at a friend’s house, there’s just not much brain space left for writing my own.
But I’m getting there, a few words at a time. Some days I think it’s the worst book ever written. But other days I think it’s pretty good. And on those days, I thank the million words that led to my first taste of writerly confidence.
Here’s something I learned through all of this: there are no wasted words. I tell this now to all my writing clients. (Some need to hear it more than others.) All the words we write play a role in our writing journey. Some (maybe many) will end up in a dusty computer folder for abandoned stories, but all count for something. Of course, this really only works if you see writing as a journey, not merely a destination.
Here’s how I do that: I keep writing.
Maybe you should too.