Let me tell you a little bit about a creative project I’ve been working on for most of my adult life…
Particularly when we’re just starting out as writers, we have a tendency to live and die by what is going to happen with our first major creative project. Will it attract a literary agent? Will it blow up the bestseller lists if I self-publish it on Amazon? Will I finally be able to retire to a mountaintop castle and haul up the drawbridge, becoming a local myth whispered about by schoolchildren?
It feels like our entire world hinges on that one project. We throw everything into it. We attach nearly our whole identity to it. We can’t imagine slinking, tail between our legs, to another project if this one doesn’t work out. We don’t want to see our loved ones’ pity (maybe mixed with some barely-disguised impatience) that all that time and emotional labor didn’t pan out.
Believe me, I’ve lived this. I’ve been in the fetal position while I made someone read me my rejection letters. There were stretches where it felt like my hair was on fire every time I checked my email.
Like most writers, my first major creative project did not put my name in lights. Only a handful of people have even seen it. Its various versions live in dusty drawers within my MacBook. Seriously, if I took my laptop to a technician and they removed the hard drive, bats would fly out of wherever the first version of this story is stored.
But while this story is hidden from view, it’s not dead. And hopefully, by telling you more about my journey with this thing, you’ll feel more confidence about the wildly unpredictable turns your own writing journey might take.
Iteration #1: It started as a story…
I was one of the least talented writers in my first creative writing classes in college, though, to be fair, one of my classmates was a bona fide K-pop star who was later subjected to bizarre, Black Mirror-style conspiracy theories that he didn’t really go to Stanford. (If anyone still needs further confirmation out there, I can put that one to bed!)
But I had an idea! Literally this GIF from my Publishing Process in GIF Form post:
So I wrote this high concept science fiction idea as a story.
It was okay! I think! The pop star kind of seemed to like it?
I then proceeded to drive my creative writing teacher crazy with my inability to hear her feedback and see what was and wasn’t on the page. I tried to use the story to get into advanced creative classes with writers like Tobias Wolff, but everyone rejected me.
By the time I graduated from college, I had decided I wanted to work in publishing instead of trying to be a writer myself. I got a job as Assistant to the President of Curtis Brown Ltd. and prided myself on being one of the few people who didn’t secretly have a manuscript in the drawer.
But this idea wouldn’t die.
My significant other at the time was a writer, and rather than play video games while she wrote, I decided to give the whole writing thing a shot…
Iteration #2: A screenplay
I worked in publishing. I read one to two hundred novels a year. I lived in New York and had no intention of moving to Los Angeles. So what did I do?
I wrote a screenplay, of course!!
I got myself a copy of Final Draft and expanded the story. I had no connections in the film world thanks to my decision in college to forgo an internship at Fox Searchlight in lieu of a summer working at a remote wilderness lodge in Alaska. (No regrets).
I banged out this screenplay and entered it in Scriptapalooza, and was more than shocked when it was eventually named a runner-up.
This was the first true positive encouragement from strangers I’d ever received for my writing. I started to believe just a little bit…
So I sent out some query letters to film agents and… nothing happened. It began to sink in for me that even if an agent or manager were interested, I wasn’t really up for the hustle of trying to make it in Hollywood.
I decided to try to rework the project a little closer to home. I decided to turn it into a novel.
Iteration #3: An Adult Science Fiction novel
I want to pause here to acknowledge something I’m brushing over: the immense amount of time and energy I spent writing these projects.
Anyone who’s ever written a complete screenplay or novel knows how much time it takes to complete one. And turning a screenplay into a novel isn’t exactly like just pushing a button.
This was also a time when I was working immensely hard to try to rise up in the publishing world as a young publishing employee, which basically meant I was working 8am to 8pm on weekdays and writing all day on both weekend days.
But no matter. I did it. I turned the screenplay into a pretty idiosyncratic short novel. And I went ahead and started sending out my query letters.
Querying literary agents in the book world felt vastly different than sending out a screenplay to a random competition. I felt like I was putting my reputation on the line in my day job. And after so much time writing, I was absolutely dying to see if I was wasting my time or not. (Spoiler: you’re never wasting your time when you’re writing, but I didn’t know that yet).
The stress! I received a bunch of no’s from the literary agents I queried, but one prominent agent sent me a very complimentary, very detailed “revise and resubmit.”
I stared at that email. I put it away. I stared at it again. It never stopped filling me with dread. I’m not sure how the agent embedded laser beams that seared my brain, but he was that good.
He was exactly right about what was wrong with the novel. And I just. didn’t. have. it. in. me. to execute the revisions. I didn’t feel like I had the motivation or the ability to accomplish what he outlined.
Not incidentally, I had an idea about a kid trapped on a planet full of substitute teachers that was burning a hole in my brain…
Iteration #4: A Young Adult Science Fiction novel
Fast forward past many days writing, many sleepless nights on submission, and the aforementioned fetal position as rejection letters rolled in..
That kid trapped on a planet full of substitute teachers became the Jacob Wonderbar series. I left the publishing world behind to pursue a new day job in the tech world, and a few years later was working at the world’s largest hedge fund (as one does).
When the hedge fund job ended, which idea resurfaced? Yes. The story turned screenplay turned adult science fiction novel.
I got back in tune with the story and decided that it might work better told from the perspective of a high schooler. I completely reinvented the world, totally changed the characters, and salvaged only the initial high concept kernel that attracted me to the story in the first place.
Working on this project nearly ruined me. It was five times as hard to write as the Jacob Wonderbar novels, at least, but I eventually finished. My agent didn’t really think the project was right for her, so I was back on the query path.
And… what do you know! A very prominent agent wants a “revise and resubmit!”
In a spectacular feat of timing, I delivered those edits at the end of February 2020, when the entire freaking world was about to have… a bit of an incident.
Long story short, much like its Adult Science Fiction uncle, this version of the story also got trapped in various publishing cul de sacs, and ultimately… I just didn’t (and don’t) think this version was ready. I had this creeping ambivalence about it. As much as I was proud I executed this version, I didn’t feel in my heart that it was ready to be out there.
And I had another idea burning a hole in my brain… So back into the drawer you go, old friend.
Iteration #5: ???
That other idea burning my brain, a middle grade fantasy novel, is winding its way through the process. I happily finished it and I don’t know what’s going to happen with it next, but I’m more confident this one is going to see the light of day in some form.
This first story, the story of my life, the one I have tried to make work four times before, the one you’re reading this long post about?
Friends, I can feel that one stirring to life like a mummy from the dusty recesses of my hard drive. Lock your doors because this thing might just be reawakening…
(We’ll see.)
My reason for telling you all of this is to reassure you that no matter what you’re working on, you’re not wasting your time.
While I don’t think my story has found its final form, each version is vastly better than the last. I can feel myself getting better as a writer and getting closer to executing the vision that’s tantalized me for most of my life.
It’s okay for novels to go into the drawer. It’s okay to dust things off and try again. It’s okay to repeat that process over and over again until you get it right. It’s okay to never get it right!
I have zero regrets putting in all the time I’ve spent on this project. And I suspect I’m not quite done yet.
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Art: Poppy Field by Claude Monet
Thank you for this useful and encouraging essay, Nathan! I’ve been reading your column for years and find it one of the best around. And written in such an engaging voice. Kudos!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
You weren’t only Assistant to the President at Curtis Brown Ltd., you became a literary agent there, one so many of us wanted to become OUR literary agent. And thank god for that, because, while you rejected my first ever manuscript, your forum for finding a critique partner led me to someone who would become one of my best friends, and who, not all that long after, became a a huge name in traditionally published police procedurals/crime novels. And for that, I shall be forever grateful to you! She never let me give up until I became traditionally published, as well. So don’t you give up either. You know more about writing/querying/publishing than most of us ever will.
I love to hear it, and am happy to hear you’re both still at it!
“…While I don’t think my story has found its final form, each version is vastly better than the last. I can feel myself getting better as a writer …” So true for me. I celebrate every little success (mostly short stories, but little successes none the less). Thanks for your columns.
I enjoyed this journey! Thanks for sharing. I feel a little bit better about my own fetal position freak outs. I sincerely hope this original idea someday and somehow makes its way into the world.
Thanks for this. It makes me feel so much better about spending time on the work, making sure it’s the best it can be, and not just tossing out a novel a year (or a novel a month! jeez…). My first novel was one of those ideas that went through a lot of iterations, and it took me ages to write it, but now it’s been out there for more than a decade and people still read it and I’m still proud of it. I’m glad I stuck with it.
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with writing formula stories and putting them out there to make a buck, but that’s not why I write. I write to explore an idea or an inspiration, and hopefully I take the reader with me on that journey of discovery. I wish it didn’t take so much time! But it’s worth it to me.
Ah, Secret Agent Man…
I have several, similar stories.
Notice, I didn’t say ‘successes.’ I said ‘stories.’
A short story I had published in my high school ‘literary magazine’ was seen by an agent, who was a friend of the mother of twins I was in a rock band with.
They both went to MIT, then Columbia, and became professors. But that’s another story.
Anyway. The agent convinced me I had to write a novel. So I did. That novel went to Thomas Crowell, and Bantam, and a few others. Because of my age (a teenager, still), and the age of my characters (it was, essentially, a teenage love story – not unlike ‘This Side of Paradise,’ which I hadn’t read, yet, exept the characters were about a year younger), pitched in a genre that hadn’t existed until maybe a year before my agent sent it around, Young Adult Fiction,
I may still have a hard copy of it lying around — it was all first written by hand, then typed on my trusty 1936 Remington Rand (the typewriter predates me by at least a couple decades), and I probably have the carbon copy in a box. Maybe. Or it’s disappeared with the estate of that first agent, one Ray Puechner (who was also Gary Paulson’s agent). It’s working title: “The Saddest City Lane,” taken from a favorite W.H. Auden poem.
Anyway. You are absolutely correct.
Another project, after The Saddest City Lane, I complained to Ray about, suggesting trying to write it (after college graduation) while also trying to hold down a fulltime first job after graduating and suggesting it was costing me my not-yet-3-years-old marriage.
Ray’s response: “Who ever told you this was going to be easy?”
Certainly not him.
“Old writers” and old projects don’t die. They kind of hang around, waiting for a chance, that mythical and fabled ‘breakthrough,’ or, even if published, wind up in the bargain bin.
Or worse. They get ‘discovered’ when you’re no longer able to benefit, like Stieg Larson’s ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ series; or even ‘The Great Gatsby.’
Or everything Patricia Highsmith ever wrote.
Look what happend to Harper Lee?
I think of writing kind of like some of the last lines of one of my father’s favorite novels, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” — “As long as you know what it is you have to do it. As long as you remember what it is you have to wait for that.”
I needed this. Thanks
This one really hit home this morning. Thanks for confirming it happens to the best of us.
Thank you for this. Your email notifications of your weekly newsletter is one of the very few I don’t select-and-delete. And this one… thanks. I live on the verge of giving up. And, best of all, I love your writing style.