Today, I have a little bit of a story for you. I want to talk about getting lost because it happened to me recently. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to discover that I was lost, to realize where I had gone wrong, and to backtrack to the point where I could fix my error.
About three years ago, I looked at the books that I was writing and thought to myself, “You know, I’d really like to write something different. I’d really like to write something that wasn’t an adventure story. I’d really like to write something revolving around this difficult idea that I had been wrestling with.” The specifics of the idea aren’t necessarily important for the story and they’re a long digression that I could rant about forever, so I’m going to leave that out.
But I was thinking, mulling through this sort of argument with myself, and I thought, “You know, self, it would be great if you wrote a book about this.” Immediately, a story that I had been working on for probably six or seven years in the back of my mind popped into my head. As I pulled that story out, dusted it off, and started to see if it would fit, I had this sort of clear vision. I thought to myself, “Man, I really want to write a utopian thriller.”
If you know anything about my books, they are neither utopian nor thrillers. I write fun adventure stories generally with fairly low stakes. They are not at all tension-filled thrillers. But I really had this gut feeling that this was an important thing for me to do.
So, I started and it was hard. It was really hard. I would write and write and write, and make very little progress. Then I would rewrite and rewrite, and still make very little progress. At one point, I just got stuck. I had about 40,000 words and I read through it and thought, “I literally don’t know what to do with this story. I don’t know where to add anything. I don’t know what to do.” So, I put it away and just sat on it. Every once in a while, I would get it out, dust it off, add a few words. But still, I just could not figure out how to move forward with it.
Then I decided, “Well, maybe what I need is pressure. Maybe what I need is a deadline.” But if I impose the deadline myself, then it won’t matter if I break it. Because I’ll just say to myself, “Well, it was a bad deadline. It wasn’t a wise estimation of how much time it would take me.” So, I can excuse it and say, “Doesn’t matter. I didn’t make the deadline. That’s fine.”
So instead, I went and found an external deadline. I did that by finding an agent I really admire. I went to that agent and pitched this story. By this time, I would say the book was about 80% done. I pitched to the agent and the agent said, “Well, don’t send it to me until it’s done because why would I want to read it in part form? But it’s an interesting enough story from what you’ve described that I’d like to see it. So send me the full manuscript when you’re done with it.”
That was huge. That was massive. Here’s a person in the industry who I really admire and would love to work with. It would be a dream come true. So now, I had this deadline.
Well, it didn’t work. I still didn’t know what to do with it. I started getting desperate. So, I sent the manuscript out to a developmental editor. The editor came back and said, “Well, you have good bones in this story, but there are problems. There are problems with how your characters are written. There are problems with the theme of the story that changes from beginning to end. The story we got at the beginning doesn’t match the story at the end.” And a bunch of other stuff. They said, “If you fix these things, we think this is going to be a fantastic story.”
I thought, “Great. I now have a roadmap for how I’m going to fix this.” And then for months and months and months, I just sat on it. I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t make any progress. And I couldn’t make progress. But even worse, I didn’t know why I couldn’t make progress.
Do you know how unbelievably frustrating it is to sit and stare at something that you know could be fantastic, that you have this clear vision for in your head, and yet not know how to take any steps forward? I didn’t know.
Thankfully, I have friends. One day, as I was bemoaning my lack of creativity regarding this story to them, they interjected, “Hold on, Seth. It sounds like you’re trying to write something like somebody else. It sounds like you’re trying to write a story that isn’t the kind of story you actually want to write.”
I pondered their words, “Huh, that’s interesting. Could it be that the problem I’ve been facing is actually me? It’s not that the story isn’t working. It’s not that I don’t understand the characters. It’s not that the plot is too complicated. But rather, it’s that this isn’t the kind of story that I write.” That put things into an interesting perspective.
Over the next few days, as I mulled over their comments and how I was trying to write this story, things became clear. The fog lifted. I started to understand, and I’m still in this process of understanding, that the way I write a story matters.
See, it’s not like I haven’t been writing. Since I started this particular story, I’ve written like 15 books. More than that. I’ve written more than 15 books. So it’s not like creatively I’m all locked up and I can’t move forward. No, I can write other stories just fine. And they’ve been great.
If this book that I’m trying to write, if this story that I’m trying to write could turn out even half as good as some of the other stuff that I’ve written, I’d be so happy. But I just couldn’t move forward with it.
So I’m starting to understand the importance of writing like yourself. And I think that the further you go in your career, the more important this becomes. Because once you’ve found your voice, straying from it will not produce good work.
A lot of the problem I was running into was that I would try to write like a thriller writer. I would try to write a really serious, tension-filled scene with lots of drama. That’s not what I write. Now, that doesn’t mean that I can’t add tension, and it doesn’t mean that I can’t add drama, and it doesn’t mean that I can’t be serious in my writing. But at a core level, I have fundamental beliefs in the goodness of the world that were not shining through in this story.
That was a direct betrayal of who I am as a creative. That was a direct betrayal of who I am as a person. And so no wonder I didn’t like it. I don’t even like reading books that don’t have some thread of hope. And yet, here I was trying to write a book that didn’t have that thread of hope, all because I had some misguided perception that in order to qualify as a utopian thriller, it had to fit into this certain category or this certain style, when it wasn’t my style.
And so I am now in this moment of clarity, and I am making progress. And I actually have excitement instead of dread when I open up the manuscript, which is just tremendous, because this is a story that I love and I want to tell. And I think it’s an important story to tell. It’s very different than everything else I’ve written, but I’m going to stay true to those core pieces of myself, and I’m going to write a Seth Ring utopian thriller.
I’m going to write this story in a way that fits with my principles and my creative talents, my understanding of the world, and I’m not going to let myself get dragged into something else, something that another writer might write. I’m just going to write like me.
So I hope that this can be an encouragement to you as well. Write like you. If you don’t yet know what you write like, then spend some time figuring it out. But if you do, if you’ve established your voice, if you have an inkling of what you want your voice to be, commit. Don’t do what I did and get stuck in this endless loop of staring at your manuscript and hating it and hating yourself because of it. Instead, just write like yourself.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/fIAOKV-F-dM
Thanks for reading and watching.
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