Last week, I finished my novel. Another draft of it, anyway (for a sense of perspective, I’ve “finished” it four times in the last two years (more in the last eight! Yeah…I’ve been at it a while)). Still, as I read through it, I had that exhilarating feeling of finality that comes at the close of any draft.
I was alone in the house. Kids all away at school and my husband who normally works from home was out on an errand. So I danced around Elaine Benes style (the only style I have, really) and belted out a few self-congratulatory tunes and then did something even more weird and crazy: I kept it to myself.
Rather than call my sisters or my BFF, rather than mention it to Dave when he came home, rather than tell anyone who asked how the writing was going, I decided to keep quiet. A delicious secret, percolating in private.
You should know that secret percolation does not come naturally to me. I prefer gushing.
I believe I absorbed this uncharacteristic idea from Seth Godin’s stellar book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. It’s quite short, but I spent six months reading it, one section each morning after writing my morning pages—an espresso shot of inspiration from a man I deem a master. He says:
Simply do the work. Do it without commentary or drama. Do it without regard for things that are out of your control. Do it without relying on the outcome being what you hoped for.
He says a lot of other things too, most every page in my copy is ferociously highlighted. He’s just the right mix between practicality, tenacity, generosity, and unreasonableness. In short, he’s magic. Though he claims there is no such thing.
The magic of the creative process is that there is no magic.
Some of us have a poem, a song, or a novel rolling around...What’s the difference, then, between you and Gil Scott-Heron? He recorded more than twenty albums and revolutionized an art form. It’s not that Gil’s songs are better than yours, or that Hemingway’s writing is better than yours. It’s that they shipped their work, and you hesitated. Of course, at first, all work is lousy. At first, the work can’t be any good—not for you and not for Hemingway. But if you’re the steam shovel that keeps working at it, bit by bit, you make progress, the work gets done, and more people are touched. There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, your job is to make it.
Three years ago, after a disheartening spate of rejections, I listened to Seth Godin’s book The Dip and it convinced me to radically revise my entire novel. That trying again would be worth doing. His ideas are often exactly what I need. So I’m passing on the recommendation, in case his ideas are what you might need, too.
Cheers,
Lacy
P.S. I recommend starting with a subscription to his daily blog. His consistency alone is enough to inspire.
P.P.S. I kept my secret for three days. Then I told Dave. Then I wrote this newsletter.
Congratulations! All this hard work will pay off. I can't wait to read your novel. And I love your post, as always.