When I was a kid, I thought I loved writing stories. But now I know that's not true. I definitely loved reading, and I loved coming up with ideas for novels. I enjoyed building fantasy worlds based on the ones I explored in books, and I liked imagining what characters might get up to there.
But then there would be actual story writing to be done. And writing was hard. I'd start off well, propelled by the thought of seeing my name - or perhaps a unique nom de plume - on the front of a novel on a Waterstones shelf. But by then I'd have another fun project to get excited about. And busy sixteen-year-old Sam would always favour the shiny new idea over the old one that had become a bit of a slog.
That attraction to writing has never gone away. At each point in my life, when I've had the chance to move away from writing, I've chosen to stick with it. It's been the focus of my A Levels, my degree and now my job. But only now, after nearly 26 years of thinking of myself as a 'writer,' am I enjoying the process of writing a novel. So how have I got here?
Embracing Organisation
The closest I'd got to writing a novel before now was 20,000 words of a sci-fi story set in the near, pollution-plagued future. I spent a few glorious months constructing the time between present day and the start of the novel. I divided the world into 'syndicates,' alliances between nations that clubbed together to fight for resources. I came up with new fuels that humanity was now searching for beneath Antarctica. It was a lot of fun.
The problem was, none of this actually prepared me for writing. The story itself was much more small-scale, focusing on a teenage boy who runs away from his mining community. So you can imagine my frustration when, 10,000 words into my novel, this enormous 'planning' document offered no help as to where the story should go next.
Organisation and planning have never come naturally to me. I never felt like I had to do much planning ahead for school work, so why should I spend my free time doing it? I could only enjoy planning when it didn't feel like planning, and that definitely hindered my staying power when it came to crafting a complex narrative.
As I made my way through A-level and then undergraduate English, I became better at writing long-form prose, and even started to enjoy writing it. And if I could have fun planning and writing complex essays of literary criticism, surely I could give novel writing another go. But, in some ways, my degree in English with Creative Writing was the biggest hindrance to my novel ambitions so far...
Freeing myself from the 'Creative Canon'
Hemingway. Carver. McCarthy. It's not that my creative writing syllabus was boring, but I think I could safely call it limited. It's not that they forced us to write in a particular style, but the modern American short story dominated our lectures and seminars.
I'm grateful for the lessons in concision and subtext that these authors have taught me, but just because short stories are quicker to write and mark than novels, doesn't mean one movement is any better than others. Both Fantasy and Sci-fi have an established tradition of short stories. But did we study Asimov? Chiang? Le Guin? If we did, I don't remember.
No one told me I wasn't allowed to write fantasy or sci-fi, but I certainly wasn't encouraged to. Every time a tutor would suggest a competition or magazine to submit our writing to, I would find no sci-fi or fantasy in the submission guidelines.
I enjoyed writing in the way we were taught at university. Flash fiction - extremely short stories that capture a moment in fewer than 1000 words - was a particular favourite of mine. But I still hadn't found a home in prose.
This academic bias against genre fiction stuck with me after I graduated. The fantasy story I wrote for my dissertation was chosen for publication in the English School's academic magazine, and yet I still convinced myself that I had to set my stories in the real world. I found myself toiling for weeks over realist or magical realist stories, just so I could have something I wasn't really proud of rejected by a magazine.
It was time to take stock. I still had lots of other projects on the go. So what writing was I really enjoying right now? And how could I turn it into the basis for an enjoyable writing experience? The answer will surprise very few of you, I'm sure.
Swapping Realism for Role Playing
As someone who has always enjoyed worldbuilding much more than writing, running role playing games (RPGs) is the perfect writing task. I come up with the world and ideas for what to do there, and then I get to watch my players and their characters do the actual storytelling.
RPGs - especially Dungeons and Dragons - is one place where my creativity has never had to stray beyond the fantasy and sci-fi elements that I enjoy crafting so much. The setting where I run my games is entirely my own - could this place and its characters be the place where I can find my novel-writing mojo once more?
Of course, it wouldn't be as easy as adapting my D&D campaign into a story. I've read those books and they're not great. RPGs are fun because you get to be the main character, and simply watching those adventures play out isn't likely to be nearly as interesting.
But here was an original fantasy setting that I had been building slowly, over many years. And I finally had the germ of a story I could set there, something quite apart from my own RPG games. Considering how little I've been enjoying prose writing lately, it was definitely worth a try.
Six months later, I'm having the most fun I've ever had writing a novel. I've been able to combine the planning and discipline I learned at university with the love of Fantasy that I gained long before my degree. The resulting combo is a story that I'm enjoying writing, and that I'm already quite proud of.
This post is the first in a new series, plotting my progress as I head towards completing my first ever novel. I'm only really in the early stages right now, but I have the momentum, drive and most importantly the inclination to press on.
My writing education convinced me that a certain style of writing would yield the best results. But, if my time as an English graduate has taught me anything, it's this: Only a writing experience that I enjoy will yield good writing; and it's only in writing things that I'm truly proud of that I will fall in love with writing once again.
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