Allie Larkin is the internationally bestselling author of the novel Stay. Jen Lancaster calls her “a master at creating complex characters who feel like old friends and crafting situations that you’d swear really happened,” and says of her new novel, Why Can’t I Be You, “I adored this book!” And Allie is sharing with 1st Books her very ingenious (and charming!) way of getting around that very common fear of novel-writing failure. – Meg
I should have known I was writing a novel, but I kept myself in a state of deep denial even after everyone around me knew that’s what I was doing.
In my mind, I was already a failed novelist with three chapters of an awful and abandoned tome hidden away in shame on a hard-drive. There was no point in beating a dead cliché.
STAY started as a writing exercise in college, resurrected when I was asked to join a writing group a year or so after graduation. I’d given up on writing almost completely, and welcomed the chance to mess around and write a short story. I slogged away on my eight pages a week for group, writing detailed back-story and subplots under the guise that I was just trying to get to know my characters better.
Every Sunday while I waited for my pages to print, I’d nervously check Duotrope Digest for submission guidelines, watching the list of possible literary magazines dwindle as my word count grew.
The writing flowed, and the characters made sense to me. Everything felt different from my failed attempt. I finally understood what writers meant when they talked about ‘finding their voice.’ But, I still couldn’t bring myself to commit. Surely I’d lose twenty or thirty thousand words when I edited. I was just seeing where the story could take me. I wasn’t writing a novel.
Finally, when I neared sixty thousand words and wasn’t close to done, I had to face the facts: my story would never be short. My methods of self-deception had to change. I focused on telling the best story I could for the characters I’d fallen in love with. I didn’t think about finding an agent, or a publisher, or strangers someday reading my work. I thought about Savannah Leone and her dog named Joe. I focused on her feelings instead of my own. I still called it a story. I just left out the short part.
I was two drafts in, with a stack of manuscript pages on the desk in front of me, before I let myself really think of my story as a novel. Even though I had several drafts ahead of me, I could finally let go of the denial. Having written a novel was much easier to deal with than wanting to write a novel.
For my second book, WHY CAN’T I BE YOU, I was working under contact. I knew it was going to be a novel, because I was contractually obligated to write a novel. The hugeness of the task overwhelmed me. I doubted every plot twist and character arc and eventually my ability to even write a book at all.
So, I quit.
On a Friday night I told my husband I wasn’t going to write the book.* I spent Saturday making peace with my decision. On Sunday an entire scene popped into my head perfectly. I sat down to write and fell in love with one of the characters so completely that the idea of not writing him anymore was painful. So, I did what I’d done the first time around: I focused on writing the characters I loved the best way I could. I thought about their hopes and fears instead of my own. Scene by scene, I wrote an 80,000 word short story that reads like a novel. I just needed to fake myself out of the pressure and the expectations so I could focus on the work.
Now, I’m busy at work on another short story. We won’t call it a novel.** Fooling myself is a part of the process. – Allie
*I’m thankful to have married a man who humors me so well.
**But it totally is.
