Jet Pack

This may sound crass, because this is crass, but my first novel should be a knockout. It should be a startling debut from a captivating new voice. One to watch.

Thus, I may never finish my first novel.

It’s tricky, because your debut novel has to be something bold and wave-making, but it’s also bound to suck a little bit if it’s actually your first, because what the hell kind of experience do you have writing a novel, right? (But novels don’t work like that, do they?) Your debut should be brilliant, shining like sterling, so the world sits up and takes note. Then you should top it with your sophomore effort, which should benefit from all the lessons you learned on your first. That buys you the luxury of slipping into something smaller and more indulgent your third time out, at which point your bibliography is varied enough that anything is possible, in any genre. You’ve become a writer of literature.

As a would-be full-time novelist, this is what career planning looks like. I sit on my couch in the middle of the night, pretending I’m awake instead of asleep, drinking vodka from a glass skull, and I plan (excuse me, I “plan”) my choice of first novel to maximize the effect of my debut. I consider which novel is better to write first, for the sake of impressing potential agents and publishers. Two things define novelists, after all: the oeuvre and the debut.I believe it, because I’ve told it to myself a whole damn lot.

(I love that word, debut. I would love to debut sometime. I’ve got a couple or four dozen books in the world and yet I’ve never debuted anything. They just got released. Sometimes they streeted. But not one of them ever debuted.)

Out of procrastination — which is a kind of fear — I convince myself that I am somehow being productive when I break yet another story for a novel without having even finished a first one yet. I have a half-dozen novels in various stages of outlining and research, any of which could be my first. I’m strategizing, see? It’s a business plan! I’m putting my would-be novels in order, considering whether it’s best for my career to be the guy who wrote this fantasy thing or that sci-fi thing or that speculative thing first, and which should come next to best add breadth and surprise to my bibliography. The part of my career where I get around to actually finishing a novel? That will come later. I believe it, because I’ve told it to myself a whole damn lot.

How do you decide which of six novels should be your first? They all have stories that want to be told. They all have things that make them topical and things that suggest they’ve missed their window. They all suck, right now, and they all might be great if you fulfill the potential they said you had in school — if your first novel is a breathtaking debut from a bold new talent.

Which is it? Is it the authentic character-driven tale of your own turmoil and pain, disguised in an urban fantasy that’ll pigeonhole you forever? What about the was-topical-four-years-ago speculative thriller with possible value for its movie rights? Don’t forget the adventure yarn you cooked up as a potential movie idea but were convinced to write as a novel because the market’s better for those. Is there a whole novel in that comic-book outline you did? Maybe you should start with your sci-fi heist story or a sword-and-sorcery yarn.Whichever you do first has to be spectacular, because you’ve theoretically been working on it for thirty years. (You haven’t.)

Whichever you do first has to be spectacular, because you’ve theoretically been working on it for thirty years. (You haven’t.) But whichever it is, it better not be your best work, or else you’ll be a hack or a laughingstock before long. You can aim at whatever the market is buying right now, or you can be so good that fads don’t matter. You can trust that some agent will see your potential beyond the single manuscript, or you can be realistic and accept that it won’t be good or sold or beloved, but will at least exist.

Trouble is, the novel that doesn’t exist is perfect. It is everything at once. It is printed on fine imaginary paper in the matte black ink of infinite possibility. Why diminish it by writing it?

Simply put, fuck all that. The novel that exists trumps those that don’t. These are all excuses for not writing. You can muck around, prioritizing novels that don’t exist, but that’s a kind of lying to yourself.

Write it. Everything else comes after.

Now let’s see if I can put my novel where my mouth is.

In case you somehow haven’t been told to listen to it yet, here’s Merlin Mann on getting creative work done, from MaximumFun.org:

The Sound of Young America