Thank you for your continued readership of my series on how to not write a novel. Whether you’re a bright young writer with your whole career ahead of you, or a frustrated old crank with several drafts in a desk drawer, I promise I can help you avoid ever finishing and publishing a novel. You can finds parts one and two of this series on my website, linked here.
I’ve written before about perfectionism and how it subverts my ability to finish things. I think it’s time to get down to some definitions, because in order to avoid becoming a novelist you must be determined to write the perfect novel. The perfect novel is not only well-written, it is also completely comprehensible to its audience. Its motivations are clear. It will wrap at the end like a good game of solitaire, each card of each suite tucking themselves neatly into order, leaving the reader with a satisfied feeling.
The perfect novel is not a genre novel. It should defy genres! Defy conventions! But still be easy to understand!
The perfect novel may require hard work, but not struggle. The writer will not spend three weeks carefully crafting a subplot about its main character’s stay in a creaky old apartment complex only to realize later that this was totally unnecessary, and weep as she cuts out these chapters and the four or five extra characters she created. No! The perfect novel will not require plotting. The writer will write and the plot will appear before her as she does so, the path lit just a little ways ahead of each step, not a hole in sight. The gun brandished at the beginning of the first act will go off with a bang in the third.
Moreover, the perfect novel will be so good, unmistakably good, that it will be picked up by a publisher within a few weeks of its second edit. (The edit only being necessary, of course, to catch a few stray commas or other minor punctuation errors.) How does the publisher hear about it? That’s a good question. Because surely the writer hasn’t spent years throwing other work out into the world, trying to get anyone to pay attention to her, or searching for an agent. The cynics among you might believe the writer has connections, but even if she does, so what? If it’s the perfect novel, who cares if there’s a little hypothetical cronyism going on here?
Because the perfect novel will not only be published in a blistering six months, it will also make the New York Times Best Seller List, be nominated and win any number of Big Name Awards, be translated into 50 languages, be optioned for film, be taught in college classes about The Perfect Novel, change the lives of everyone who ever reads it and stay in print for decades, nay centuries, nay for the entire remaining history of human literature, for as long as humans read, forever and ever, its objective and universally agreed-upon value as a work of art only growing with time. And before the last human with eyes to read or ears to hear shuffles off this mortal coil, they will make sure to put The Perfect Novel in a titanium box so anyone or anything who wants to know what the pinnacle of literary human achievement looks like they will be able to gaze upon it, weep with joy and rebuild the next civilization in Its image.
And who has time to accept Pulitzers and fly around the world doing script supervision? Yeesh, what a nightmare. There’s so much good TV right now! And if you still want to write a novel for some reason, but know it’s not going to be The Perfect Novel, what’s even the point? Give up now. You’re welcome.