Writing for pleasure. Or, the pleasure of writing. I get a lot of joy from writing. I always believed that it was the pleasure of writing that made me sit down and put words on a page. Being a published author would be an excellent bonus, but it wasn’t what drove me to write. And I guess, after all these years of writing and six unpublished novels, I’ve proved that to be true.
I have been working on the same novel for over four years. I had thought I would spend this summer restarting the submission process, researching agents and honing my query letter. But recently, I’ve lost motivation. Every time I think it’s finished, a new development demands a fresh revision. I’ve been editing and re-editing it for so long now that it’s like an addiction. Sometimes, I’m so pleased with it, amazed at what I have written, but other times, I look at the market out there in the bookshops and compare it with other similar fiction, and it feels utterly mediocre and immature. And now doubts about a major plot flaw are starting to creep in, which would mean another huge rewrite. Is all that extra stress and effort worth it for a novel that no-one is ever going to read?
I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably never be published, but it isn’t easy to admit. There are times when that insidious truth sucks the joy out of the thing I love so much. What’s the point of spending hours shaping and crafting a single paragraph, searching for the right words – no, the perfect word, the one and only adjective or verb that accurately conveys the intended emotions, sometimes a whole day’s work – only for it to sit unread in my computer. Why not pack it all in and go read a good book instead? The world does not need my novels. Even I don’t need my novels. This hobby of mine has been an entertaining distraction over the years, but that’s all it ever was.
I could embark on some other great projects. I could set myself the challenge of reading all the Dickens novels that I haven’t yet read – that’s quite a lot. I could try some of this Romantasy that has flooded the market; I suspect I would have fallen head over heels for it if it had been around when I was a young adult reader. I could start a TikTok, reviewing all the books I’ve ever read; I’m very good at remembering books, so I’d have plenty of material. I could take up gardening, declutter my house, join a gym. There’s so much more stuff I could be doing instead of wasting my time writing fiction that will never be published.
Except I know I won’t. I’ve been here before, depressed and demoralised, convinced my work is the worst fiction in the world and doesn’t deserve to be published. I might stop working for a while, but I can’t get it out of my head completely. These worlds I’ve imagined, these characters I’ve created, they’re always in my head, whether I want them there or not. And even if I ignore them, my brain will still function in “narrative mode” automatically. It’s how I lull myself to sleep in the small hours of a wakeful night. It fills the empty space of a car journey or a peaceful walk. It’s how I can sit for over an hour or two as an invigilator in an exam, entertained by the audiobook running in my head. I cannot stop it, and I wouldn’t want to; there is so much pleasure in it.
And even if I never wrote anything new or serious again, I could still write. I don’t need a complete work in progress to write a stray scene here, a random chapter there. I have enough material in my head to keep me busy with sketches and odds and ends for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy doing so. It’s like patchwork – a square of this and that, and who cares if it never comes together to make a quilt. There is enough joy in the texture and colours of each fabric square to satisfy my soul.
Maybe I just need a break from Novel Number Six, maybe even from all of my own work. I should put it away and enjoy the rest of my summer reading other things – anything else other than something I have written myself. Reading for pleasure, my other favourite hobby. And then, if the desire returns, maybe write something else, maybe go back to the short stories, or chapters of novels that will only ever exist in my imagination. Maybe then I can get back to writing for pleasure.
M J Schofield 