On the Burner Novel

Here we have a concept that I had never heard uttered or conceptualized as such. At the time of writing this, I was working through the first edit of a novel that I intended to shop or self-publish. Basically, I was determined to see this book in print. I had many reasons for making it happen, rather than waiting for the publishing gods to bless it and put it out into the world.

I had put a lot of work into this first novel. It seems that the common experience for the novelist is that the first and second books are the hardest to complete. The best guess is about ten hours a week were invested into drafting and rewriting. That puts me at about two years to get to its current state. I had all the same feelings that many writers report, maybe it’s amazing, and I’ll hit the best seller’s lists. Maybe I’ll get to retire from one publication. House on the hill, here I come!

Sounds nice. The trouble is the more prominent emotion is fear and dread. Did I just spend two years typing out a waste of digital space and hundreds of pages of kindling? These feelings reign more times than not. So, you won’t be surprised to hear that a quick trip through Twitter threw a tanker full of fuel on my kindling. I discovered something that made too much sense. I stumbled upon the idea of the burner novel.

Completing a draft of a novel is a wonderful accomplishment. Hours upon hours. Gallons of coffee. Enough daydreaming to get committed. Typing enough that carpel tunnel is a likely diagnosis. All this effort culminated in the fulfilling last save that completes the draft. While I’ve learned to separate myself from the work, I still wonder how much of my soul is left in the words. I have accomplished the 8^th, maybe 9^th greatest wonder of the world. How could it be anything else?

Sure, no one has read it. Not even me. But this is the ticket. Right? Or have I just wasted the last two years? I really should have stuck it out in retail management. That was a good job. I had benefits. And what is this I just read? The first novel should go in the trash? What about the investment of time and money and Starbucks Rewards? Has this been a prolonged training exercise?

Let’s dive in and figure it out. 

The idea of a burner novel is that the work that you’re going to produce right off the bat is going to contain the learning experiences required to create that novel.  I’ve also heard that you shouldn’t attempt to get a book published until you’ve written one million words. That’s about ten books’ worth.

I get it. I think back to the work I created in school. It was fanciful and a crude copy of whatever I was reading at the time. Any agent or editor worth his salt would have rejected that flaming pile of young adult nonsense. Even now as I look back on my most current work with the most evident feeling being insecurity.

As artists, we get a lot of mixed messages. We are supposed to put ourselves out there and be brave. “You miss all the shots you don’t take.” “Carpi Diem.” All of it. And at the same time, we need approval to make a living in this artistry. It’s not for ego, it’s for a paycheck. Ego and self or on the line, but they’re collateral damage in the wake of professional approval. We are not supposed to send unvetted works directly to a publisher. An agent will need to pick you up if you’re to be successful.

What are we to make of this? Should I workshop my writing until there are no notes to be given? We all know that this is not possible. I can think of a dozen things to change about my story while I write this. Still, we should put our best foot forward, and we should submit the most complete work.

That was my plan.  I had completed two rewrites and I have an independent editor reviewing it now. Hopefully, it will be polished and good enough to have someone else pay to publish it. If not, I’m shelling out the money to print it. Either outcome is acceptable and will advance the rest of my endeavors.

Since this was my first attempt at getting a novel published, I thought maybe I should’ve burned it. I had accumulated, garnered, harnessed, found, discovered, (insert verb of learning) so much throughout the process that my next works would benefit from the effort. Undoubtedly, I would produce better work moving forward. The excitement was real and palpable.

Does this mean I should’ve abandoned this work? This novel might just reek of novice and amateur. My fear at that point was starting a fiction career with a rookie book. I could’ve tossed it and had the next story be the debut novel. The timeline would get pushed back another year or two. I enjoyed the gig work and just getting by, right? Not so much.

I estimated that between previous projects (whether complete or not), two degrees, countless work communications, blog writing, and any number of reasons to put words down that I have exceeded the million-word threshold. The fact that I hadn’t saved the first save on a completed draft before now isn’t relevant to any work being ready.

Readiness isn’t about burner drafts or how many millions of words you write. I’m sure that at some point I would have exceeded an arbitrary word threshold. Readiness has to do with the artist. If you were running a marathon, you would already be an avid runner. At least I hope so. You probably have hundreds of miles on your soles. That doesn’t mean you run alongside other marathoners before registering to compete. It does mean that you have a breadth of experience that has prepared you for the event.

Writing and artistry are the same. Why am I confident enough in my work now to move forward with it? It’s not because I completed the draft. It’s because I have lived enough and believed in the content enough to put it out into the world.

Going through my bachelor’s I recall a striking statistic. Keep in mind this was fifteen or twenty years ago. The average age of an author when they were first published was thirty-seven. The twenty-something me heard that number, and I figured it was a result of those authors simply not getting around to their work. Maybe they had to get fed up with their jobs to pursue writing. They were lazy.

I had eclipsed forty, and I was working to get published before I turned forty-five. I would end up pushing the curve back. Not because I was lazy, but because I hadn’t experienced enough of life to create something worth the effort. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and I may look back at this time baffled by my hubris.

I held some preconceived notions as a young writer and student. Among those was genre. I loved fantasy and science fiction. I still do. As a result, I assumed that what I needed was imagination. With an ample supply of creativity, I could write whatever I wanted to, and since it wouldn’t be set in our world, I could bypass experience. The joy and strife of any character would be of my imagination.

I wrote a lot of stories. I started a lot of novels. I never finished any of them. A certain paralysis has set in. I couldn’t figure it out. So much of my studies were designed and selected to help my writing. I studied genre, composition, workshopping, and above all, I studied structure. I was a good writer. I was an even better content editor. Looking back at career decisions, helping writers with their works would have been a good choice.

Something important was missing. I chalked up my lack of completion and success to the demands of life. A busy job, a troubled marriage, student loans, mortgage payments, you get it. What I know now is you need experience to give you something to write about. Something that can only be conjured from experience.  You must give your muse something to work with.

All the studies of structure and genre helped immensely, and I’m grateful for the experiences. I wouldn’t change a thing. Those studies were part of my experience, with which I can compose feeling and meaning of what I have learned. Even if the work is a fanciful creation of fantasy, I can now relate the power of joy and strife that was previously lacking.

This is why I am confident sending out a first work that could be discarded for a more experience effort. Every work that comes next should be more evolved from the previous one. It comes down to identifying your threshold and doing so without fear or ego. A tall order, I know. You can do it.

Should you write a novel and immediately throw it in the fire like Chevy Chase in Funny Farm? That’s up to you. I will tell you that you should have a depth of experience that makes your work worth the read. Part of that experience may be writing a novel-length story. One that allows you to understand foreshadowing, structure, character development, etc. Click the last save, and file it away with a newfound pride that comes from drafting a novel.

On the other hand, if you don’t think you need some life experience, then you probably need to live a little more. Go out and live. Climb a couple of mountains, travel to another country, date the field, fall in love, get your heart broken. Just make sure that you write about it. You don’t have to write a novel. You just learn to express the experience.