Bates - The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time

For Jacob and Emma

My thanks to the fine people at Writers Digest for making this book possible, including Jane Friedman for the green light, Kelly Nickell for the inspiration and championing, and Lauren Mosko Bailey for helping show me the way (again). My gratitude to the English departments at Clemson University and the University of Cincinnatiin particular Ron Moran, Harold Woodell, Keith Lee Morris, Michael Griffith, Jim Schiff, and especially Brock Clarkefor teaching me what I know, and to my generous colleagues at Miami University of Ohio for the opportunity to pass it on.

Special thanks to my family and friends for their endless encouragement and support. I wouldnt be here without you.

And, in the for everything category, my heartfelt thanks to Jessica.

Id originally intended to begin this book by listing a number of famous authors who held day jobs and then did their best work by night.

Of course I wouldve mentioned Franz Kafka, who spent his days at a cramped desk at Workers Accident Insurance Institute of Prague and his nights hunched over his writing desk at home, making stories and novels so fantastic and strange it would be necessary to coin a term, Kafkaesque, to describe them.

I mightve mentioned William Carlos Williams (practicing physician) or Joseph Heller (advertising) or Toni Morrison (publishing). I could bring up stories, by now well known, of authors currently making more-than-comfortable livings who began by stealing time to write: Stephen King, for example, who taught high school English, or John Grisham, who worked as an attorney, or J.K. Rowling, who, as the story goes, was actually fired from her job and was on welfare when she began writing Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. For a bit of comic relief, Id bring up William Faulkners stint as a postmaster comic because I find it difficult to believe any mail was actually delivered.

But as I kept doing research for this introduction, the list kept getting bigger and bigger, as did the names on it. Names so big, in fact, I had trouble picturing these authors doing anything but writing: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Admittedly, every writer-friend I know works a day job, so I dont know why Id be surprised at the number of famous authors who had them, too. I suppose it never occurred to me that my bookshelves might be filled with masterpieces by men and women who put in their hours at a workplace, came home and found a quiet corner, and then wrote. From writers, in other words, whose days mightve looked suspiciously like mine. Or like yours.

The truth is, there are only a handful of writers working who make their living solely by their fiction. Most are people who put in long days, have families to care for or responsibilities to meet, work hard to make the bills, could probably use a rest, and who nevertheless feel compelled, after all is said and done, to sit by themselves and write stories. These Nighttime Novelists publish the majority of books on the shelves. Some teach or go to school, some write or edit, some work office jobs, some work construction, but all of them have decided that theres something wonderful, something worthwhile, in staying up late or getting up a little early or spending their weekends working on a novel. It makes them feel like theyre part of something bigger than themselves. It feels meaningful. I agree with them completely and if youre reading this book, I assume you agree, too.

The aim of this book is to help you join those ranks. This is not a plan or a club or a cult; theres no timetable or calendar inside with dates marked for you; there are no dues to pay (at least not to me) and no obligations (at least not to me). The book is not going to demand you write between 9 PM and 1 AM every night and then send me a postcard telling me you did it. In fact, all of you will have slightly different working habits and methods. Some of you might be Early Morning Novelists. Most will be Weekend Novelists. Some may even be Holiday Novelists. You know much better than I when your best time to work is, and this book wont try to dictate that for you. What this book will do is help you work better and smarter, help you make the most of your writing time. Your time is valuable, after all and youve chosen something very valuable to spend it on.

Its my hope that The Nighttime Novelist will help you spend it wisely.

B eginning a novel is always an intimidating, self-conscious exercise, like waving your hand dramatically and saying Let There Be Light. And make no mistake: You are, indeed, creating a brand new world every time you write, one that didnt exist before you said so.

Sometimes youll be an active and involved creator, stepping in and asserting control over the work where its needed. But at other times, especially once the fictional world really begins taking on a life of its own, your biggest job will be to try to keep up and record the story as it tells you where its headed next. Those are great writing dayshours passing by before youve even looked at the clock, your fingers clacking the whole time. Youll get great sleep these nights if, that is, the story will let you. But a story can only begin directing you if, first, youve set up the fundamentals of the story in the right ways.

Thats what the following lessons and exercises will help you do: craft your opening and build your world line by line, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, until youve hit certain markers and set up a complete, compelling first act. The beginning is important stuff: This is your readers invitation into your fictional world, and how well you construct the world from the start determines whether the reader will accept the invitation, decide to stay for the next three hundred pages or so, or move on.

Lets start at the very beginningthe initial ideaand make sure were doing everything we can to grab the readers attention and keep it.

On the Subject

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

After that, things can only get better.

Stephen King

E very novel youve ever readincluding that one that felt so real, you were surprised when you closed it to find you were sitting on your couch or propped up in bedbegan in the same simple way: with a fleeting thought or image that caught the writers attention, held it for a moment, and led him to begin asking What if ?

I dont mean that the writer began debating the idea intellectually, trying to complicate the idea on purpose. Rather, the writer witnessed something everyday that led him to begin daydreaming, not just asking questions but imagining possible answers, constructing scenarios. Writing a novel begins not in a moment of work but a moment of play, with an intriguing idea or image inspiring the mind toward unexpected leaps and unanticipated connections. (Meanwhile the rest of the checkout line behind you is wondering why you arent moving forward but are instead staring off dreamily into space.)