Episode #307: Getting Reinspired after Failed or Abandoned Book Projects
Featuring Paolo Bacigalupi
Hello, novel starters, novel writers, and novel finishers—I hope novel finishers!
Most writers either have or will have a failed or abandoned book project—or two, or three, or four—over the course of their lifetimes. The more you write, the more crisis moments you’ll face. It can be hard to come back from those moments, which is why this week’s episode with Paolo Bacigalupi is so encouraging. He shares with us his journey back from the edge of despair, having lost all motivation to write—and how he found his way to his latest book, Navola. This inspiring episode closes out our fifth season, and includes tips for world-building and wise words about this existential question so many of us face: Why write?
Paolo Bacigalupi’s tips for persisting:
Don’t ignore the labor done by writers who appear to have “instantaneous” success.
Build the stamina to repeat the try-fail-learn cycle many times over.
Recognize that everything in writing is outside the zone of your control, except taking the time to sit down, write, and send.
Sally forth into battle with your strongest allies—enjoyment in the act of writing and a healthy, contented relationship with creativity.
Partial transcript from the show
Grant: I’m Grant Faulkner, an expert at starting novels and a sometimes novel finisher, and I’m with my co-host Brooke Warner, who I know to be a very disciplined and determined person and writer, but I’m curious to get your take on the question I’m reflecting on today, Brooke. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to finish a novel because I just taught a class on novel writing, and one class dealt with getting through the muddy middle, and all of the grit and determination you need to finish a novel. In the midst of that, I was researching this interview with Paolo, and I came across the most interesting quote from him. He said, “Well, when you keep trying to write things and you keep failing to actually finish them it's like sticking your finger in a light socket. It is sort of painful and damaging, you think ‘maybe I should do something different.’” I often get the question, “How do I know when my novel is done?” I don’t often get the question, “How do I know if I should quit writing my novel?” And it’s true, as much as I want to guide people to finish their work, sometimes we have to know when it’s time to move on and leave a story behind. What are your own thoughts about how to decide if to finish a book, and do you have any abandoned book projects?
Brooke: Good question and I wonder if there’s a different answer when it comes to nonfiction. I have worked with a lot of people over the years who’ve abandoned projects, who have projects sitting that they’ll maybe circle back to. With novels, I think it’s more often the case that writers can’t quite get them to work, or maybe they grow tired of them, or maybe they don’t think the story ended up being what they wanted it to be. I think with fiction there’s more pressure to actually be a good writer than there is with nonfiction. What I mean by that is that the bar for fiction is quite high with regard to the craft of storytelling. With nonfiction, it matters, but if you’ve lived an amazing life story, sometimes that’s enough to propel the work. Or if you’re writing a prescriptive book, it’s oftentimes very straightforward and not as creatively rigorous. I think these things weigh heavily on novelists. I remember in particular a writer I was working with who wanted me to assess her novel, and I did. And it had some story flaws, and when I brought them to her attention she was basically like, “Yeah, I know, and I don’t know how to fix them.” We talked about how she might fix the book, and then a week later she got back to me and said she didn’t have it in her to do the work. And I thought that was honest and okay. She just didn’t have the passion for this story anymore—and she went on to start something new. For my part, the only book I started and abandoned was this day book idea I had—365 creative pieces. And the reason I let it go is simple—it was just too much. I still like this idea and maybe I’ll pick it back up again. And that’s the beauty of our creative journeys. We can take breaks, start new things, put things down—indefinitely or not. What’s your take on abandoning projects, Grant? I know you’ve written on this topic in the past.
Grant: One of the reading assignments I have my students do is to read John Green’s NaNowriMo pep talk. In it, he says,
Way down deep in the dark archives of my hard drive, I have a folder called Follies, which contains an impressive collection of abandoned stories: There’s the zombie apocalypse novel about corn genetics, the sequel, the one about the Kuwaiti American bowling prodigy, the desert island novel, and many more. These stories have only one thing in common: They’re all about 25,000 words.
He says he’s abandoned them for two reasons: he reaches the middle, the hard part, and their initial appeal has waned, so he just doesn’t have the oomph to keep going. And then he says abandoned novels are more promising than completed ones—they still have potential, in other words. Now, I also have a folder full of half-finished novels. I don’t even know when or why I abandoned them—or if I’ll return to them—but I put enough work into them that they beg revisiting, and they beg an evaluation of whether they are worth finishing. But here’s my thing. I believe that the biggest part of finishing a book is your belief in whether your story matters—to you, to the world, to anybody. That halfway mark, the muddy middle, is so damning, it’s where so many novels go to die, so you have to have the resolve of belief to keep going. That’s why I’ve always liked NaNoWriMo’s mantra of “Your story matters,” because you have to believe your story matters to start it. You have to believe it matters to get through the muddy middle and finish it. And you then you have to believe in it to publish and promote it. And I guess I must have stopped believing in my abandoned novels. So that’s the criteria for whether to finish a novel.
Brooke: I appreciate what you said there Grant, that you must’ve stopped believing in the novels. So do you think you just unconsciously decided that your half-finished novels didn’t matter enough?
Grant: Yeah, I made a decision without making a decision. Maybe another story came around that I was more passionate about, and my belief in that story eclipsed my belief in one of these abandoned novels. Somehow I wasn’t feeling the call strongly enough. I know this isn’t the greatest guidance for writers because it’s a little squishy and intuitive, but I think your writing does ask this question: If it matters enough to be uncomfortable with, if it matters enough to sit down and write instead of going off to enjoy yourself, if it matters enough to muster up the grit necessary to keep going. Also the question Paolo talks about is that sometimes you want to find a way to feel good about your novel and I think believing that it matters helps you feel good about writing it. What’s your take?
Brooke: Yeah, I mean, it’s not that different from the story I told above earlier in the case of that writer, her novel, at least a draft of it, was finished. But I think this thing you bring up of feeling or not feeling the call strongly enough is a big deal. Who wants to spend hours and hours on something that they’re not really passionate about? I think you have to love your story so much to want to take the time it takes not just to finish the book, but to publish it and promote it and talk about it. You and I know how long a book lives with you and all the energy it takes up post-publication. All of that is about the call—the call to see it through, put it into the world, have it be an extension of you forever. It’s such a big deal, and maybe we don’t acknowledge that often enough so I’m glad we’re getting a chance to do that on today’s show, Grant.
Grant: I mentioned grit earlier, and I’m a big believer in developing grit as a writer. There’s a great TED Talk by Angela Duckworth if listeners want to find out more, but she defines grit as “sticking with your future, day in and day out, and not just for the week, not just for the month, but years.” So grit requires a bit of stubbornness and determination. And the force of your stubbornness and determination is fueled by your belief in your story, so if you’re not feeling it, it might be time to pause, either to refresh or to move on to something else, just like Paolo did. You know, I think the main thing that’s necessary to finish a book project beyond grit is just figuring out what can feed your momentum. If you’re going to work on a book for one, two, three or more years, you’re going to hit many muddy middles of exhaustion like John Green mentioned, so it’s important to think about how to replenish. How do you still be curious about your work? How do you nourish your purpose? What would you advise, Brooke?
Brooke: I think it’s all about keeping the love, keeping the passion for something. I know the grit I have for my own writing is one-part me being in love with it, one-part wanting to make an impact of some sort, and one-part some internal drive to do it that I’m not even sure I can quantify. But this is a great exercise, Grant, and one I encourage our listeners to consider for themselves. What’s your answer to that same question—how do you stay curious about your work?
Grant: I often tell the story of my “doomed novel” that I was working on for nearly 10 years. I discovered 100-word stories toward the end of that 10 years, and I took a break to write them, and that replenished my creative juices in a couple of different ways:
1) I got the satisfaction of completing a project, which gave me creative fuel.
2) I got the satisfaction of publishing some of those stories, so that also refilled my creative fuel.
You know what, though? I finished that novel, but I didn’t have enough belief in it to give it much of a shot getting published. I think I only submitted it to three or four publishers. So it might have been a novel that I should have given up on. I don’t know. It definitely lacked the full commitment of my full belief in it, and I think that hampered it. That said, I type notes and ideas for some of the novels in my folder of abandoned novels, so maybe I’ll revive one of them someday. I’ll make sure I believe the story matters to me before proceeding, though. I’m going to be interested in hearing Paolo’s process for switching gears and switching books to write Navola after this short break.
This Week’s Book Trend:
The New York Times just put out a list of the “100 Best Books in the 21st Century” so far. Lists like this do get people talking about books, thinking about their own rankings, and then discovering books. However, art being ranked is a tricky thing, and it's impossible to get right. There were so many amazing books that weren’t on this list. Have you seen the list? Check it out, linked here. What do you think?
ABOUT PAOLO BACIGALUPI
Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of The Water Knife and The Windup Girl, as well as the YA novel Ship Breaker, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has won a Hugo and a Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and he is a three-time winner of the Locus Award. His most recent book is Navola.