4 Mistakes Beginning Writers Make When Writing a Book
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It took me years to figure out what I’m sharing with you in this post on mistakes beginning writers make, and I hope I can save you time and heartache. If you’re stuck on page three or two hundred of your book, or you’re simply unsure where to begin, here are four misconceptions that I see beginning writers make when they’re just starting out.
Mistake #1: Thinking there’s only one right way to do it.
Years ago, before I’d written and published books, I was listening to the audio version of a very popular how-to book on storytelling. I only made it to chapter 3, when the narrator said something along the lines of, “If you get one thing wrong in your story, all of it will fall apart.”
TURN OFF AUDIOBOOK. NEVER RE-OPEN.
I knew that the last thing this beginning writer needed was an additional reason to stress over the idea that every minor creative decision matters.
I also discovered, over time, that it’s far from true. Writing a novel—or a memoir for that matter, or any other narrative—is not a board game in which there is only *one* route to the finish line.
Maybe throwing a spaceship into your novel about three sisters in the eighteenth century who concoct a plot to take over their father’s ship is…a choice that changes the type of story you’re writing. But even then, does it “FALL APART”?
It’s just different. It’s a new thing—with a very clear surprise: #aliens.
Early drafts of my first novel When You Read This included:
-a cult
-the cult’s entire religious treatise
-a kidnapping
-several major characters who got cut, including an ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend, an ex-husband (I was going through a phase?), and an extra intern named Bonnie
Did I eventually cut these elements because including them make the novel fall apart? Or did striking them ruin it? I suppose it depends on what you think of the novel. But I see it all as experimentation that ultimately led to what the novel became.
One major mistake that beginning writers make is believing that, in writing, there is only one right path for your story.
This is not true. And once you relieve yourself of that pressure, you may find, like me, that the whole process becomes more enjoyable and interesting.
Writing is not Candy Land; there are a million ways to the finish line.
Mistake #2: Thinking it has to be done in big chunks at a time.
This is less a mistake that beginning writers make and more one that all writers make.
Take me, for instance. The night I had my first baby, I also sold my second novel on proposal (literally the same night).
I was thrilled, of course, to have sold it. But it also meant I now had to write it. And as a brand new first-time mom, writing felt the most daunting it had ever felt. I was under-slept, very emotional, and full of questions about who I was in the world now.
I also felt inexplicably guilty for leaving the baby at home while I went off to write.
So I did the only thing I could: I set myself a daily goal that didn’t feel too scary. I would write, by hand, 10 pages a day.
Every day after my son turned six weeks old, I found time to go to this coffee shop while my mom, husband, or friend watched the baby, and I sat on a hard, wooden stool and tried to tune out the teenagers skipping class at the nearby arts high school while I thought, Mary, you can get to 10 pages. Some days it took me only an hour; others it took me two or three.
I was shocked when it worked.
I finished a draft: 90,000 words in six months.
Now, I look back on that experience and think about how the greatest feats are possible when we tackle them in increments.
You don’t have to write 8 hours a day to write a book.
You don’t have to write every day to write a book.
You don’t have to quit your job to write a book.
You can write a book in a few pages a day, having slept 5 hours the night before and the night before that and the night before that. I’ve done it.
The question is, do you want to? (If so, check out The One Year Get-Your-Book-Done Plan: Write, Revise, & Pitch Your Novel or Memoir in 12 Months.)
Mistake #3: Sticking too tightly to your original vision.
Last spring, my husband, son and I were planning a cross-country move, and my decompressing activity in the evenings became putzing around the Internet for visual inspiration for the new place.
I was doing that thing where you move and think, “I’m going to be a whole new person in this new place!” You imagine yourself in your new life and all of your flaws and vices don’t exist. (No? Just me?)
A Google rabbit hole landed me on this piece of art, and I fell in love with it immediately, before knowing anything about it:
It’s obviously pie charts, unlabeled.
What did I love so much about it?
I learned that the artists, Hvass and Hannibal, were interested in “organizing information in ways that draw on locally known visual language, but seen with an outsider’s eye...where the actual content and data is left a mystery, and only the form is present, letting the viewer decide which contents to assign the images.”
This struck me as very much like writing a novel. Then I discovered the title of this particular work:
Losing the Plot.
LOSING THE PLOT!
In every novel, story, and essay I’ve ever written, there comes a point where the story diverges from the path I expected. Even if I haven’t outlined, I always have an idea of where it’s going...and I’m always wrong.
This being wrong, I think, is what makes it work, in the end.
Submitting to being wrong and following where the story is leading instead of my own preconceived notions is the moment at which the story is actually born. It gets breath, a life, an energy of its own.
The “pie charts”—all the facts that I’ve created for my characters and story—become mere forms, and together they develop into a thing that’s bigger than any labels I could assign it.
This is another mistake that beginning writers make—believing that they must stick to their original vision, when really, they are free to wander wherever creativity takes them.
Turns out, the print was affordable.
I ordered one to place above my desk, where it now reminds me daily to surrender, and to teach other writers to do the same, even with my flaws intact.
Mistake #4: Giving up.
Ever heard of Amanda Baldeneaux?
She’s a mom with a full-time job. She’s also a writer who worked on a short story for about a year before submitting it to publication after publication, only to be rejected by them all.
Every few months, she’d submit it, get a rejection, revise a bit, and submit again.
One day, after receiving a rejection, she decided to restructure the whole thing—to start over. But before doing so, she received an email from The Missouri Review announcing that its deadline for its Editors’ Prize was about to pass.
Since we writers thrive on deadlines, she thought “Why not? I’ll submit this before I crack it wide open and gut it.”
Her story “Salt Land” won the prize, the Jeffrey E. Smith Prize—$5,000, a prestigious fiction award.
It was her only acceptance.
A mistake I made as a beginning writer myself was believing that success should come quickly, and that it would, if I was any good.
Like Amanda, it took me a long time: six years.
Sometimes we have to persevere for years.
It can be hard at times to keep going without knowing if what we’re working on is any good, if it’s going to see the light, if it’s going to be given space in the world outside our notebooks.
But stories like Amanda’s can remind beginning writers that writing is thankless until it isn’t, and that rejections are part of the process.
You can be rejected again and again and again and again. You can sit alone in a room writing for years without anyone handing you accolades or a gold star or a contract (or, sometimes, even knowing that you’re a writer!)
The last mistake beginning writers make is giving up.
Every writer must spend time writing into the unknown future, and your ego is likely to throw a tantrum every now and then. It’s okay—give your ego a pat on the back and say, you’re fine, go play a video game while I finish this chapter.
Because at some point, if you keep writing, you will find your validation. It may not be the form you expect, but it will come—and it might be better than what you expect.