by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmal.com

I am now five years into this writing project. As the headline suggests, the editing and polishing process of a piece of writing really is not fun at all. I think this is more so with fiction writing and perhaps poems vs non fiction. You see I have experience in both. I’ve written about 50 (i.e. non fiction) essays on martinantonsmith.com (btw no one reads them).

With non fiction (essays in particular) editing is much quicker, assuming you wrote the essay with a well developed idea in your mind before you put finger to keyboard (I may as well update the line ‘pen to paper’). It’s mainly a spell/grammar check and you brief throwing out of repetition etc.

With fiction however – (especially if it’s a novella or novel) you have so much more to worry about. You might worry about the story being to dull; you might worry about having too many or not enough characters; you may worry that the storyline is not believable enough; you may worry that it is too cliche; you may worry that the entire plotline is a train careering off the tracks into a deep canyon; you may worry that you are promoting anarchy or division too much or not enough; You may worry that your main characters are too one dimensional or that you haven’t got the personality you have of them in your mind’s eye across to the page. There are so many worries of this kind and more with non fiction editing & the writing of it in general.

I have a novel I have technically finished. I’m well into the third reread and edit. Everything was going great until six months ago. It became to much to bare. So I’ve been half way through the third edit now for six months. My brain simply said it can’t continue after 18 months of work in total from the first line being written to the edit process.

Perhaps this is good information about how I write. Perhaps I can’t do a novel for longer than 18 months. It stands to reason doesn’t it? After all if you can’t wrap up a long piece of writing in say 18-24 months, is it not feasible/likely that you will take five, seven, ten years? Or abandon it entirely? I am sure that this is a risk. And this is why (I think) it’s so hard if you’re a new writer and after you’ve finished the first draft.

I expect the solution to this problem is where you need to engage the (awful to fiction writers by nature I would say) ‘real world machinery of the writing industry’. Because when you think about it, the editing/re-reading polishing etc is the start of the business side of writing. Most writers are not good at this. In the real world of commerce/trade the things that people can’t & don’t want to do well themselves are done by a contractor/business that offers this service. This is logical.

So in my case perhaps it is because I (as a new writer) am isolated from the ‘business side’ of writing that my novel editing has stalled. If I was a sixty year old with three books under my belt I’m sure the book would be published officially by now, with no extended stalling period.

So I should attend writing festivals and have more intimate friendships and associatiions with other writers. I should know more about the business side.

It’s also worth examining this inertia re the business side more here briefly. I guess foe a new writer like myself – this represents a ‘phase change’ in your mind – a ‘fork in the road’ moment. You see I’m sure you’re subconscious knows that when you are serious about the business side of writing it is the start of the death of you as an amateur writer. In being serious about the business side you also must move into a new identity – that of being a ‘proper writer’. This (as a new writer) means your subconscious will resist this fork in the road or ‘growing up as a writer’ moment.

From here I guess the world is split between that don’t take the fork in the road and those that do (as Yogi Berra said famously said you should). The ones hat do I am sue make a conscious executive decision to make sure they take that leap into acute discomfort. They know they have to in order to be a ‘real writer’ that is willing to put their (psychological and reputational) necks of the chopping board.

Most ‘writers to be’ I am sure decide to not take the fork in the road and stall small – for the stress on the mind is too much to bear. Perhaps they have defined themselves as someone who is a wallflower professionally. Perhaps they are worried what their friends will think (i.e. the fall into placating the beast of ‘tall poppy syndrome’).

Since I have never had many friends the tall poppy thing is not a problem. I think the other one is present – I’ve probably subconsciously defined myself as an ‘amateur writer’ – at least to a degree. It can’t be too bad as if it was I would not have this website. So I guess I’m savable. I’ll just have to keep telling myself that it would be a tragedy to shrink myself just like all the other writers out there that never take that fork in the road.

Self belief is such a hard thing, the mind is such a weldy beast. No wonder the philosophy of stoicism (i.e Marcus Aurelius et al) is such an important thing. It seems so old fashioned to point to stoicism – but I think it works as a method to beat your own mind when it works against you. But these musings about stoicism’s benefits are not sure things. Perhaps stoicism is not the answer to moving from being an amateur to professional writer.

Perhaps the answer is ‘fun’. Perhaps you need to simply make the business side of writing ‘fun’. Perhaps for every positive move towards the (psychologically stressful) business side you simple need to balance it with something ‘fun’ to offset the internal stress. After all we all have things we like to do – so in theory this method should be easy to do.

And of course all this talk of solutions is why writers write books on ‘how to write’. On that I have read Stephen King’s book and Orwells. The problem is the first time you read a book like that nothing happens. This is no coincidence – it is just proof that the subconscious mind of the amateur writer wants to hold back the future professional forever or at least as long as possible.

I’ll leave it there, and I hope that this article on writing helps me to start re-editing the Novel again (it’s tentatively called ‘Trafficlight Dystopia’ btw).

I wonder if you have some thoughts on the matter? (please share in a comment, I would like the advice!)

Happy reading and writing,

Anton M Smith