She's a Writer

Sometimes people come up to me and ask me if I’ve written a book.  My natural reaction to this is to gawk at them and then fume about why they would think a respectable person like me would have done something so ostentatiously frivolous as write a book.  

Then my brain clicks.

I’ve written 21 of of them.

I’m the grandmother of novelists.  

My problem is that I am viciously opposed to self-promotion, self-congratulatory yap, and even telling people I’m a writer.  I feel a lot of shame about being a writer, which is why only one of my 21 novels is in print right now.   I feel physically ill whenever I give someone a business card or admit that I’m a novelist at all.

I need a pen name.

People ask me what kind of novels I write too, and that poses all sorts of problems.  I write a little bit of everything.  I don’t even know what to call it.  Is it YA?  Sometimes.  Is it romance?  Sometimes.  Is it fantasy?  Sometimes.  Is it science fiction?  Sometimes.  Is it chic lit?  Sometimes.  Is it horror?  Sometimes.  Is it non-fiction?  Sometimes!

Then people ask me what my book is about and I am paralyzed.  I can think of about six ways to describe that particular project.  How much time to they have?  I feel this intense pressure to tell someone about my novel using the fewest words possible… and that is not very enticing.  

So, I feel this way.  

Then I meet someone who tells me they are a writer.  I ask them about their writing and 99% of the time, they haven’t written a complete first draft of a novel yet, and they’re calling themselves a novelist.  A lot of the time they don’t even know they need to write something 60,000 words long for it to constitute being a novel.  

And I’m staring at them because I don’t understand what just happened.

Do they understand what it is they are claiming?  I work at a novel almost every day.  I’m ashamed and they’re romanticizing it?  Do they have any concept how embarrassing writing a novel has the potential to be?  

When I read someone else’s book, I can usually make an educated guess as to how they got their information.  I can make bets as to how they did their research, what their romantic experience has been for them to churn out the book they’ve written.  I can tell the gender of the author.  I can give some basic ideas as to what that author is likely to be like in person, and possibly an idea as to what their mental health is like.  Sometimes I can even say what their age and weight are before I’ve seen the picture.  

All because books don’t come from nothing.  Anything that is written well comes from someone who has experienced something.  

Writing a book is like stripping and the self-promotion is like calling people over for a better look, obviously not at your body, but at everything that you are.  

At this point, I bet you’re wondering why I have even one book for sale.  It’s a moving story.  I was in my bathroom, here at the lake, and I was standing under my skylight.  I was thinking that I had better stop writing books.  I had better stop writing anything.  

You see, the other problem with writing a book is the spot it hits on an effort versus reward diagram.  The opposite of writing a novel on that chart is sewing a button on a pair of pants.  You know the button I mean, the important button that keeps your pants on, positioned over the zipper.  Without that button, the pants are useless.  If you take the two minutes it takes to sew that button on (low effort), you could use those pants for years more (huge reward), you don’t have to buy a new pair of pants, and everyone who sees you doesn’t know they should be grateful, until you start traipsing around with no pants.  Everyone wins!  A book on the other hand is a lot of effort for no guaranteed reward.

Writing a book is a lot more like playing the slots than anyone would like to believe.  Yes, you can improve your skill.  You should improve your skill, but you could write something perfectly wonderful and have no one take any notice, even if you get a publishing company, even if your mom likes it, even if you have honed it for ten years.  As a matter of fact, even if you stack the cards in your favor you are still likely to lose.  Yet another reason why admitting to being a novelist is mortifying.  It’s very similar to admitting you’re a gambling addict.

That idea brings us back to the chart of effort versus reward.  The consuming of a novel takes effort.  My book Behind His Mask takes over eight hours to read aloud.  It’s hard to gauge how long it would take a person to read it silently and get my message.  This means that this process is a lot of effort at both ends.

Now if I stop and think about the reasons I was drawn to writing novels in the first place, there are a couple motivations that stand out.  Firstly, I like the dissection of complicated issues, thus a novel is like an intimate conversation where you spill the complex juicy details in a private setting.  The novel is long and there is room enough for the conversation (eight hours apparently), which could never take place over tea.  Secondly, I am a reader that is exceptionally hard to please because my imagination is so vivid.  I have a list of pet peeves in other people’s writing a mile long.  I can’t even come up with a list of ten novels I think are indispensable reading.   

But I have already accomplished a lot of what I wished to accomplish with my writing within the pages of the 21 novels I have already finished.  So, why am I still writing?

Yes, so back to the bathroom.  I was standing under the skylight and I realized I have never felt that the Lord took much interest in my writing.  There is a lot of blood, unnecessary surgery, passionate kissing, setting things on fire, and meddling in other people’s business in my books.  I never even asked the Lord if he was a fan, because I felt for sure that he couldn’t be.  

And under the skylight I was deeply considering giving it up.  It would have been a good time.  I hadn’t written much in the few years before because I was busy with my little children.  I was very tired of the effort versus reward diagram and it never going my way (referencing my first book published with a publishing company being a flop), and I felt certain it couldn’t matter to a single soul if I gave it up.

And then, it was like the Lord came into the room and stood behind me so I couldn’t see him and whispered in my ear, “You are past the point of no return.”  

As I read that last line back, it sounds ominous, but it isn’t, especially if you’ve heard Elder Uchtdorf talk about flying.  The point of no return is when you’re going between two points and you’ve now traveled far enough that even if you have a problem it is easier to head on to your destination than to turn back.

So, the Lord said like a tickle behind my ear, “You are past the point of no return.  Other people don’t know what you know about writing.  There are girls out there who want what you have earned badly and they are twenty years off of getting it.  You are much closer to your destination than you think.  This is your life’s work and you need to keep going.”

And I felt like crying and screaming, “But I don’t know how to go on.  Publishing is horrible!  I can’t do it.”

And he said, “I’ll show you.”

So, he’s been showing me, and yes, it’s horrible.  Yes, it’s such an uphill slog it’s hurtful.  Yes, self promotion makes me want to blow my brains out.  And yes, whenever I meet a new person who tells me they are a novelist, I shudder, and I want to warn them not to get where I am.  Don’t write.  Don’t hope.  Don’t tell stories unless you are willing to write them in your own blood.  Turn back now, save yourself, because I’m afraid and I have to continue on.  

Half of me wishes someone in my past had known enough to tell me to stop.  The other half of me reads the part in Behind His Mask where she slaps his masked face so hard, the mask flies off and smashes on the cobble stones, and I think, Yeah!