Dufresne - Is life like this?: a guide to writing your first novel in six months

Y OUVE ALWAYS WANTED to write a novel, but you havent been able to. Not yet, you havent. Perhaps youve been too intimidated to even begin. (Who do I think I am?) Or youve started writing several novels over the years, each with abundant hope and enthusiasm, but you soon became discouraged when the characters in your head did not breathe on the page. Or maybe you keep pulling the same novel out of the desk drawer whenever you have some downtime, and you work on it again for a week or a monthyou feel a feverish sense of urgencyand the novel keeps growing, year after year, but seems unwilling to resolve itself, and then, alas, the so-called real world summons you, or you lose confidence in your creative or organizational abilities, and you shove the manuscript back into the drawer and push your chair away from the annoying desk. Well, you should know that youre not alone. Weve all done the same thing. Writing is hard, and its harder for the writer than it is for anyone else. Is Life Like This? is aimed at getting you past the inevitable obstacles and the inescapable dejection, and helping you get a competent and compelling draft of your novel donethat means beginning, middle, and (the hardest part) endin six months.

You begin writing your novel at the same place everyone else begins. That is, you begin the journey not knowing where youll end up. You may have a destination in mind, and you may well set off in that direction, but what youll encounter along the way will likely alter your course. In other words, you begin writing your novel in doubt and uncertainty. This uncertainty, though daunting, is crucial to the writing process. Cherish it. Uncertainty allows for, even encourages, revelation and surprise, while it prevents the manipulation of character or plot to suit your preconceived, and usually ill-conceived, notion of what the novel must be. In writing the first draft, you begin to work through all the uncertainty and advance toward meaning.

The premise of this book is that if you come to understand how the writing process worksby fits and starts, with equal parts elation and frustrationyou wont give in to despair when you feel stuck, as you inevitably will. If you understand that the novel-writing process is messy, chaotic, and perversely irrational at times, if you know that you will lose your way (because if you dont get lost, then youre not exploring; youre following a worn path, one weve been down before) and that you will excise words, delete sentences, and remove whole chapters because thats just the way it goesfor you and for everyone elsethen maybe you wont raise your arms in surrender when you feel besieged; instead youll do what you need to doyoull write your way through the difficulties.

Writing a novel is a commitment of energy, passion, and intelligence, all of which youve plenty of. And its a commitment of time, which is, unfortunately, in short supply for most of us. Youve got a job and familial obligations. Youve got a social life. Youve got important matters to attend tothose pesky kids, the lawn maintenance, the unrelenting e-mails. How can you justify sitting around and making things up? Know this: Everything in your life is incompatible with writing and always will be. You are going to have to be fierce in defense of your writing time in these coming months if you are serious. The daily task of writing your novel may cause some tension around the house and within your close circle of friends. So be it. Youve got characters to nourish and cities to build. You have matters of consequence calling for your undivided attention.

You bring patience and tenacity to the writing desk. You set loose your imagination, and this book provides the method to help you shape your requisite madness, as it were, into a coherent narrative. Youve got enough to deal with in creating your brave new world. You shouldnt have to worry about what comes next. Youve found your central character, and you think, What do I do now? What you do now is follow the weekly writing plan; you do the writing exercises, and now you have a setting, a narrator, a plot, and so it goes. Trust in the process. Thats what this book is for: to point the way and to organize the thousand steps in the novel-writing process. Your writing schedule for the next twenty-six weeks is laid out. Youll start with a blank slate. Youll begin by exploring your own life for fictional and thematic material and then drive on deep into the imaginative world of the novel. Youll start by thinking of characters and then places, plot, theme, scene, point of view, and so on all the way to revision. While youre writing serenely, while youre focused on the weeks subject, youll be encouraged, reassured, and interrupted on occasion for a chat about what a novel might be, and about the forms and structures of novels.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done. Remember that you always find time to do what you love. You only have to want to write as much as you want to watch TV or listen to music. You can do this! So get to the writing desk. Check your impatience at the door, but bring your enthusiasm and passion. Youre going to live a dozen lives; youre going to learn about your own life, about the world around you, and about the human condition. The world youll create is going to be more vivid and provocative than the one outside your door. This is going to be fun. This is the year your novel gets written.

L ETS DO THE impossible. Lets decide were going to write the first draft of our novel in six months, three hours a day. Our total writing-time goal is twenty-one hours a week. Three hours a day. Twenty-one hours for twenty-six weeks. If you can manage only twelve hours during a particular work week, you can easily write for three extra hours on the weekend. Dont skip a day. If you have only five minutes on some horrific day when the car breaks down and the lines at Fresh Market are out the door, use those five minutes to write. In fact, write while youre waiting for the car in the dingy repair shop reception area or write in the supermarket checkout line. Characters will be all around you. If you slip into bed one night only to realize that between the Hendry account, the impromptu staff meeting, the birthday party for the twins in the steno pool, and the Little League doubleheader, you didnt get a minute to write, then grab the pen and the memo pad on your bedside table and write. In a letter to Maria Kiselyova, who wanted to know how to become a writer, Anton Chekhov offered this bit of unvarnished advice: Write as much as you can!! Write, write, write until your fingers break!