Writers: How Much Should We Be Talking About Our Works In Progress?

Here’s an idea. Try writing an article on how much you think you should be talking about your works in progress, without talking too much about your work in progress.

Okay. I was never a fan of writers’ groups. I don’t want ten people standing, hands on hips, over my first draft of anything (an accurate portrayal, or is my inexperience shining through?), dissecting breathless, two-a.m. sentences whose meanings I have yet to decide. In fact, I am reluctant to let anyone read my writing until I suspect it is close to perfect. Only then, when I have grown confident in a piece, can I stand to hear criticism without wanting to tear it up. I dread to think of sharing something in too developmental a state and having my belief in it shattered.

"A book is never the product of a single, whiskey-and-cigarette-fueled night, as it is so often portrayed on TV. It is a long and arduous undertaking, which can become profoundly lonely."

At the same time, I live in fear from the point of conception that the project I am working on is so brilliant, anyone who gets a glimpse will be bound to steal it. Maybe they can write faster than I can, and before I reach the halfway point, I will look up to see my story already printed and bound with someone else’s name on it, lining the front windows of bookshops worldwide and winning all the awards out there.

"I dread to think of sharing something in too developmental a state and having my belief in it shattered."

Does it make sense to hold both fears – that your book might be exceptionally bad, and that it might be exceptionally good – at once? Probably not. But I have experienced the former case and heard horror stories about the latter. I imagine that the danger each project faces will depend upon how good it is (if there can be such an objective measure). Unfortunate, then, that the only way to find out is to take the risk of sharing it.

In defense of fearing premature criticism, it is no small feat to write a book. On some level, your faith must remain absolute. For who could sit week after week, month after month – sometimes, year after year – and work at something that they didn’t think would be worth the effort? A book is never the product of a single, whiskey-and-cigarette-fueled night, as it is so often portrayed on TV (where have the writers responsible drawn that experience from?). It is a long and arduous undertaking, which can become profoundly lonely.

A desire to dispel some of that loneliness might be what drives you to talk about your work in progress. You might find that you thrive on bouncing ideas, with fellow writers or trusted readers. Or, in a case of deserved criticism, that you save yourself a lot of time and heartache on a premise that doesn’t work.

I won’t detail my current project – for as long as it remains, in my head, the literary world’s greatest prospect – but I will give the example of a previous one which, at last, I feel confident that I will not return to.

After the release of my first book, Love and Only Water, I didn’t know what to write. I feared that I had come up with the best story I was capable of (how differently I feel now) and spent weeks watching my cursor blink at the top of a blank document. Having entered the worlds of sales and publicity, I was also preoccupied with ‘what the market wanted’ and trying to generate an idea based on that, rather than on my own, creative instincts.

"It is possible to write a book that you don't believe in – just not well."

It was with this mindset that I came to Othella, a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Genius, I thought. With a retelling, readers would trust that they were buying into a story tried-and-tested, rather than taking a risk on something unknown. Set in Cyprus, so on-brand for me, with the feminist angle that I thought came, inherently, with the gender-swap of a protagonist (how my feelings have changed on that, too).

Now, I will eat my words. It is possible to write a book that you don’t believe in – just not well. In five attempts at Othella, I never felt able to take ownership of the story. Maybe other writers – of the very in-vogue mythological retellings or classic tales with contemporary twists – can inhabit characters they did not create. But for me, not growing ‘Jacoba’ or ‘Roderica’ from something deep within myself was jarring. It felt like a pantomime of writing.

This was true from the start, and yet I had so convinced myself of the idea’s commercial viability (something my ex-agent was always on about) that I forced myself through draft after draft. I didn’t talk about it for fear that it was too stealable – the framework was there, out in the open for anyone to use – and so I found myself in the hole of having spent too much time on what no one could tell me was a dead project. The more time I spent, the more fretful I became that I must justify it by publishing the book, and so I dug myself deeper.

This went on until, halfheartedly, I shared a draft with one or two people. I suppose I hoped my fears were wrong, and that they would convince me Othella was an accomplishment. It wasn’t. They didn’t. I lost confidence in myself as a writer again until, after the wound of a traumatic pregnancy loss, I wrote the story I had to in order to heal. The responses to Thirty-Eight Days of Rain have shown me that its authenticity has meant more to readers than any plot I could have devised with ‘the market’ in mind.

"Ideally, you want people who will stoke the fires of your excitement about a project without fanning the flames when they rear too high."

So, what was the lesson? Maybe to care less about what ‘publishing’ might think, but more about what people do. To consult a handful of readers you trust, at a stage when it feels safe. Ideally, you want people who will stoke the fires of your excitement about a project without fanning the flames when they rear too high. I feel fortunate to have found a good few of those people, this year. As for my talking about Othella here, whether my execution was the problem with that book remains to be seen. Is the idea worth stealing? I suppose we will find out.