Illustration by Aedin Gardill
There are many paths to writing a novel and they all go through The Woods. If the children’s story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has taught us anything it’s that we can’t ease our journeys by skipping over or ducking under obstacles. There is no way around the swampy, buggy, painstaking parts of the writing process. The Woods is where novels are written, and authors are born. If we make it through.
Think of somewhere you want to go. Now, imagine trying to get there in a pair of steel boots. Your every step is effortful. Sprinkle around you trees so densely packed and fecund with overstory that you lose sight of your path. It is a small consolation that there is no single right way to your destination, because there are so many wrong routes to take. Peering through corridors of arched branches, you sense the promise of some directions over others. But, in The Woods all ways fritter into shadow.
Walking in steel boots would have been strenuous enough, but your challenge is compounded by the fact that your efforts may not even be rewarded. More likely than not, you will need to turn around to try another way.
This pivoting, experimental, back and forth trajectory belongs to the writer-traveller. It describes the nonlinear shape of our creative progress towards completing a novel, all the while learning how to walk in “literary” shoes.
As I approach the twelfth chapter of my mystery novel, I can feel new muscles flex in my legs. I understand that my body is strong enough to complete this journey, but I wonder if my mind can. Learning the mechanics of craft is only half the struggle; the other half is managing the stress endemic to the process. The writing part of writing may well be the easiest. Harder still is parenting yourself through unchartered, and at times hostile, terrain.
It is at this unspoken obstacle where I imagine many would-be writers falter.
When I first became Writer-In-Residence at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, I drew a chart on my whiteboard with rows marked 1 to 20 and columns labelled March through September. The rows were the chapters I would write and the months were when I would surely write them by. Three chapters per month for roughly six months would get me my full manuscript. That was the plan.
Nothing in our linear, grade-oriented education system prepares us for the odd shapes creative progress can take. The writer-traveller must do the work of normalising its organic sprawl for themselves (perhaps that’s why I’ve set my novel on hills and river bends.) Flowing through each book is the one that goes unwritten. These phantom tales tell the story of the story, as the author narrates their own journey to themselves. I have learned the hard way that if you think of your personal story in unkind terms, your fictional story will suffer. What you write and how you manage the writing process are linked. Just as we wrongly project anger onto our friends after a terrible day, we writers project our feelings about the creative writing process onto the page.
That is why we need a guide not just to writing but through writing, as well.
On the cusp of June, I am, according to my whiteboard, still on track. I marvel at this fact because my progress has been anything but linear. I know I have progressed because I no longer return to the very beginning of my novel each time I stray off course. But, as I continue my journey through The Woods, I feel the darkness close in. And so, this time, as I take the daily plunge down from my desk, through the portal of my screen, and back into The Woods, I will bring my writer-traveller self a gift. It isn’t more information on how to make characters compelling or plots suspenseful. Rather, these ten verbal back-rubs are to equip her for the other half of the challenge. So, here goes:
1. Hi Kayla. You are probably lost again. Don’t worry, that’s actually exactly where you need to be. Creative progress includes retracing your steps and starting again, knowing that bit more each time.
2. Hi Kayla. You are probably freaking out by now. Be kind to yourself. Having a bad writing day does not make you unworthy to walk the face of the Earth, just as having a good writing day doesn’t make you a worthy presidential candidate. You are in a process; you are not the process itself.
3. Hi Kayla. You are probably thinking no one else in the history of the world has wasted this much time going around in circles. Do not flatter yourself. You might be alone in your nick of The Woods but there are millions of wandering creatives thinking the same thing.
4. Hi Kayla. Are you encountering the same obstacles over and over? Be curious. Invite that struggling part of you for tea and ask her questions. Perhaps your difficulties off the page are crawling into your manuscript. Sitting across from yourself, you can trade old obstacles for new.
5. Hi Kayla. You are probably too mired in muck to realize that the part of you not in The Woods forgot to eat today. Please remember that you are not a figment of your own imagination. Take care of yourself.
6. Hi Kayla. Hopefully, you are now physically full and only mentally fatigued. Ask your mind out on a date. Court her like only birds of paradise know how, with spectacles, smells, new ideas and good vibes. Give her something to flirt with and, in return, she will help you fall in love with the world again.
7. Hi Kayla. You are probably thinking that writing fiction is a fake job. Maybe. But aren’t all jobs fake from the perspective of a bird?
8. Hi Kayla. You might be feeling proud of yourself for making it this far. That’s great! Pride is not taboo, it’s a healthy response to persisting with something really difficult.
9. Hi Kayla. You can probably see the light through the trees now. Go towards it. It’s where the story of your story ends. You’ve done all you can to deliver this singular, uniquely personal expression safely out of The Woods. The rest isn’t up to you. Whatever happens though, you made it through.
10. Hi Kayla. You are probably lost again. If you keep on going, I will give you cookies.
