What's your opinion on your opinion?

Why I decided to write a novel in the first place.

It took me a minute to decide which dictator to go with for this image. Just to clarify dictators are bad. All of them.

Recently I’ve been asking myself a lot, what drove me to write a novel in the first place?

Was it an ego thing? To get my name on a front cover? A need to share my “enlightened” opinions with the world?

It’s taken me the best part of six years to write this thing, I’ve devoted early mornings, late nights and weekends to it, and I don’t want to even think of the mental and financial energy it’s pulled out of me.

I’m certainly a bit of a sucker for suffering, but I’m sure even my endurance for this thankless pursuit would have fizzled out if ego was my main driver.

In the beginning it required some self discipline to drag myself out of bed and sit in front of the screen. But that was only in the beginning.

If I’m being honest, a large part of my regular writing routine has been compulsive. A need to get the words out. Often it will ruin the rest of my day if I don’t.

The strange thing is, a lot of the words I needed to “get out” across that six year period, didn’t have much to do with the novel I was writing at all. (Though if I’d recognized this at the time, it probably wouldn’t have taken me six years.) Time and again, I’d find myself following trains of thought that were way off the trajectory of my plot outline and have to reign myself in.

Which makes me suspect my motivations for doing this thing are slightly more interesting than I initially assumed.

In whose opinion?

See, part of my plot involves a “coming of age,” element. Working with a cast of characters who were either following the right path or the wrong path. This naturally positions the writer (and hopefully the reader) in a place of judgement. It calls into question, what do I think is the right path to take in life?

I’ve always been fairly opinionated, if not outspoken. Back when I first started writing this novel, if you’d have asked me to prescribe an optimal way to live life, I would have happily offered a series of suggestions to you.

But, when it came to fitting it into a plot? Coming up with scenarios. Maintaining an air of realism throughout? Making sure a given plot point fits in with the cause and effect of the the surrounding characters? That’s when I started to see. “Oh shit, that obvious way of looking at the world isn’t so obvious any more.”

Reading back on early drafts, I included literal rules about how to live life. Things like, never live on somebody else’s time, never let your willpower dip below a certain threshold unless you’re certain you won’t be required to make any important decisions that day, never allow external obstacles to dictate your reality.

Granted, some of these “rules” were attached to characters looking at the world in what I saw as the “wrong” way, but you might note a bit of a theme there.

Very black and white. Very individualistic. All with an air of survival attached to them.

Based on the above list, you’d think I was living during a time where the Vikings might invade at any moment. I’d be lying if I said some of this stuff didn’t bleed through into my ordinary life.

But hindsight is 20/20. At the time my thought process was: These are my ideas, I am right. So right that I’m going to put them in print…

Thinking or just regurgitating?

The funny thing is, I didn’t start the real thinking until I put those ideas in print. Only then did that paper have an opportunity to speak back to me and ask,

“are you sure you actually want to be preaching this?”

“Maybe look at it a little bit closer,”

“Maybe flesh out the counter points a bit more.”

Which was great because it allowed me to fix all the holes in my arguments behind closed doors, before anyone got to see them. This spared me from stepping on my own words in conversation and looking like a red faced idiot on more than one occasion.

These days my plot no longer makes umbrella cases for societal reform, it’s only preachy when I’m trying to shine a light on preachiness. It’s now more character focused, tracing conflicting journeys of individuals trying to make their way through the world. I’ve tried to strip all “big voice” claims of right and wrong from the plot wherever I can find them.

I owe all of that to the writing process itself.

The Real Motive

I guess what I’m hovering around here is the suspicion, that my “need” to get words out, was driven by some little voice in the back of my mind whispering, “you need to evolve your way of looking at the world,” which manifested in me embarking on this strange, apprenticeship in solitude—the real motive behind writing this thing.

And I’m grateful for that “need”, because it’s been an investment in something much larger than a few words on a page.

Sorry if this is all sounding a bit woo-woo. If it helps, I’m trying to approach this from a psychological¹ rather than metaphysical² angle here.

I suppose there’s no way of telling whether I would have just aged out of my old way of thinking naturally, or whether it took the act of typing it all up on a page and looking at it in print to spur this change.

It raises an interesting question about opinions though doesn’t it? When they first formulate in your mind, they look so shiny and perfect (the more black and white the better)

When that simple logic first slides into place, it’s so easy to adopt it, and identify with it, without putting it through any type of vetting process. Why rub dirt on your shiny new idea like that? Fuck the devil’s advocate, fuck self scrutiny, it’s much easier to just come out with it, and if someone disagrees? Hash it out in a good old fashioned argument (which can be a decent way to uncover holes in your opinion, but more often than not comes down to who is the more skillful arguer).

I just thought that was an interesting observation on how the writing process can facilitate a change in how you look at the world.

But….

Even now, sitting behind my desk and reading all these retroactive judgements, I can’t help but feel I’m taking a bit of a high-horse position over my younger self here. As if I’ve got it all figured out. This whole newsletter has an air of enlightenment about it that rubs me the wrong way.

The truth is, even now, I’m not really testing these ideas.

I’ve built out a mental model of where a given idea might go—which is better than nothing. But, even if I go to the furthest lengths to make a good-faith argument, this way of doing things is still in the realm of theory.

Theory is not real life.

That’s where the reader comes in. Their reaction, their feedback—and I don’t mean polite compliments from friends and family—are the real indicator that you’ve struck on a “true” idea.

Are people picking up this story and finding it triggers parallels in their own life? Is the plot taking them to places in their own minds that they haven’t visited to for a while?

I don’t think I’m there yet, but that’s the next step.

Only when the ideas I’m expressing are corroborated with something close to a universal truth, will they resonate broadly.

Which I suppose explains the ultimate goal of getting published, the deeper drive to see this novel completed.

It’s not about the external recognition, it’s proof of concept.³

But then again, who knows? This is just me playing Monday morning quarterback. Interpretation always has its limits.

1. The subconscious etc.

2. The muse, divine order, etc

3. Or evolution of concept.