On writing a novel in three months

Don't try this at home (plus thoughts on process)

As I write this, it’s been two weeks since I last wrote for this newsletter¹ and almost three weeks since I finished a 90,000 draft of my novel.

Whew.

I’m still trying to grapple with what I did. Is it crazy to write a book in such a short time? Yes. Was I tired? Absolutely. Did I regret it? Not at all. In fact, I wish I had started sooner. As my husband said, “Some people just dream about writing a book, but you actually did it.”

Making the decision to write a book was a big first step for me.

If you knew me in my twenties, you’d know that I was not certain about wanting to be a writer. Most of what I did was read other people’s writing—blogs, mainly. I read mommy bloggers, food bloggers, interiors & lifestyle bloggers, basically people who were out there “doing it,” seemingly having a ball. I never thought about actually bucking down and taking writing seriously, to work on my craft. Words were what I cared about, and yet…I did not show it on the page. That’s because I had no idea how to make it as a writer. So I didn’t try.

In my family (and culture), you don’t make a living as a writer or any kind of creative professional. That is just a fact. The only person I knew who wrote was my dad. He wrote such beautiful poetry and short stories that other people enjoyed but never actually paid him for. So I grew up thinking and believing that there was no way to “make it” as a writer.

This idea/belief can be applied to just about anything, not just writing. When you don’t see what’s possible, you don’t believe it exists. Sadly, my father passed away when I was eighteen, so I never had the chance to ask him what it was like to toil away for so long without getting any kind of financial traction or status.

Since this year began, I’ve spoken to a handful of published authors for profiles, and one of the questions I asked them was about their journey as a writer. As an aspiring author myself, I really wanted to know what was in their heads. And for most of them, they knew they wanted be a writer at a young age. (When I say ‘young’ I mean generally around college/early adulthood). That’s because many of them grew up in environments that facilitated this kind of desire. There were people around them who wrote, or who supported their creative hobbies or simply appreciated the process. That is not what I had growing up.

But I’m not poo-pooing on this fact. I use it as a reflection tool, a way to challenge the narrative, and ultimately see what I can do.

Before I started writing my novel (a work of fiction based on my parents’ youth), I had participated in NaNoWriMo, a month-long mental race to churn out 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. I signed up and completed 50,000 words of a very bad novel. It was so bad that I’ve not looked at it again since I finished it. But before I started writing for NaNoWriMo, I also attempted (and failed) at three other novels.

NaNoWriMo was a prep course to what I call real writing. It was to see whether or not I had the brain capacity to do something that was very hard for a lot of people. To pump myself up, I read a bunch of NaNoWriMo blog posts in which they published pep talks written by several well-known (and many bestselling) novelists.

One of them was Kevin Kwan, whose Crazy Rich Asians series I loved so much. In his pep talk, he detailed his process of how he wrote Crazy Rich Asians in random spurts while stuck at airport lounges to finally finishing the 140,000 word draft only when he got the opportunity of a lifetime that forced him to sit down and finish the novel—he met an agent who was confused about the ending. He told her that there was no ending because he hadn’t finished the book yet. So they struck a deal. If he finished his book in a month, she would find him a publisher.

That’s exactly what he did. The way he did it was by shutting out everything else. He wrote:

“I told myself I would check my messages and emails only after 4:00pm, and even then I would only respond to emergencies. And then I wrote. Or on some bad days, I at least tried to. I wrote and wrote from morning to late at night and paced around my apartment and screamed and cried and laughed and kept on doing it for thirty days straight. I didn’t shave for a month, I did not bathe sometimes for three days in a row, I did not see any of my friends, and I ordered way too much bad Chinese takeout. But at the end of those thirty days I had somehow, miraculously, finished my novel.”

Now, I don’t know much about Kwan’s personal life, but I know from his visceral descriptions above that it was not easy. He had to become a hermit for 30 days. He had to sacrifice his normal lifestyle in order to accomplish a goal.

This sounds absolutely terrifying and unsustainable long term, but I can definitely see the attractiveness of it. To sprint to the end and then relax when it’s all over. I learned from someone who did both—write in random spurts for a long time to actually finishing the novel. I decided I had to let go of any desire for perfection or revision and simply write. It was either now or never.

So I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.

Every day from January 6th to March 30th, I got up at 4 a.m. and wrote. Or at least, I tried to. I even created a log that I can check off for every day that I wrote. Most of the days were checked. There were a handful of days, where for a variety of reasons I did not manage to crank out any words at all. I figured that would happen and I was okay with it.

At the same time, I was very determined to finish the novel in three months. I told myself that if I could do it, then I would spend a month (or a minimum of two weeks) not looking at my book draft after I completed it. I would allow my mind to wander, to consume things like British TV dramas, documentaries, books stacked high on my nightstand, and articles I’d saved. Then, when I was ready I would look at the draft and begin the process of revision.

Writing a book is a rollercoaster of emotions, many of which steer towards failure and disappointment. It’s much heightened when you attempt to do it in three months. I can’t say that I recommend it, for when I was nearing the end (early to mid-March) I was exhausted beyond belief, doubting myself every single day, thinking, “How can I possibly create any more words than what’s already on the page? This is awful!” Not only that, I had to fight with my inner demon that told me I needed to edit as I go along—something I normally do when I write.

Writing a book taught me so much. It showed me that I didn’t need to edit, that the first draft is always the shitty ones, and that it’s okay to let it be that way. I learned that the beauty in telling a story cannot be achieved on the first draft alone. I learned that I have many, many more drafts to go. I learned that I can actually do a hard thing even when I have other responsibilities, like a day job, children and a spouse. And even when it’s ready to be presented to an agent, I’m certain others will have opinions about it, and thus, will require more drafts.

I have a tall mountain to climb, literary-speaking. Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

One of the books I read and loved last year was Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed. I loved this book for a variety of reasons—one of which is the long and laborious process the author went through. He wrote the first scene in 2007, when he was still a computer scientist at Yahoo! and it wasn’t until several years later when he was enrolled in an MFA program that he turned it into an actual novel. The whole process, as told in this interview, took him almost ten years. The book was published last year, and landed in my hands shortly thereafter. It’s a beautiful amalgamation of politics, religion, family and identity in a time of political and social upheaval—something I strove for in my own book.

As much as I fantasize (and even made a goal) of having a draft ready for an agent’s critiques, I realize I may have more years to go. As I get older, I learned to accept the fact that it’s the journey that matters, not the final destination. (Sounds cliché, but I think it’s true.) I learned to accept my imperfections. I know what I lack, and that kind of knowledge is powerful because it directs me to what I need to work on, which is telling stories in a way that compels people and opens up possibilities and expand their minds and perspectives and leads them on a journey and takes their mind away to a different place, if only for a while. That’s the beauty of words, of stories. For me, I chose to do it with fiction. But for you, it can be anything—journaling, blogging, writing poetry—so long as you’re projecting what matters to you.

In case you missed it…

• On love and friendship

• On the past two years

• On collective empathy

One more thing:

Thanks to all those who weighed in on my dilemma. When I wrote it, I was clearly exhausted from the three months I was spending on writing a novel (see above), so I needed a break. Through much of your comments, and my own preferences (and let’s be real: more time to edit my book and more time for life), I’ve decided to make this newsletter a bi-weekly event. And I’ll even write about whatever I want! (Thanks Ruth, for the suggestion). Sometimes it will be about food, sometimes it will be about family, sometimes it will simply be cultural commentary about something that’s on my mind. But it will always have a lot of thought and feelings, because I value your time and I want you to stick around.

See you in two weeks!

Hoang

1. It really should be called a blog, but whatever.