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What is it like to write a novel as compared to a career in writing reviews or articles? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Thelma Adams, novelist and film critic, on Quora.
What is it like to write a novel after being a review writer? It's very different, that's for sure. Writing novels is like a marathon. Reviews and articles are closer to sprints.
The two – fiction writing and journalism – are very different energetically. In general, writing novels draws on deep emotional reserves. It demands carrying vast amounts of information in your head. When writing book-length fiction, you have to dig deep emotionally, and often mine the private lives of a variety of characters. Your skin often becomes very thin and porous as opposed to thick, which can leak out into your everyday life – that's why it's not necessarily easy to live with a novelist. At the very least: it takes work. Sometimes, the book can become like a haunted trailer, and you carry your fictional ghosts with you everywhere you go.
When writing novels, you have to create and keep a broad canvas in your head. It's something that I find difficult to achieve in fits and starts. A novelist has to pace their story to keep a reader's attention over the long haul, alternating exposition, description, action and dialogue, and infusing all with conflict and tension, humor and pathos. With a historical novel like mine set in Arizona territory in the early 1880s, one also has to carefully weave in facts - was there a train to Tombstone or did you have to take the last leg by stagecoach - so they don't stand out awkwardly and impede the book's flow.
The entire process requires an emotional commitment on the writer's part. If you are going to be able to complete this book, you will have to be willing to create a safe space in your own life. For me, emotional ups and downs make writing a book challenging: you may choose not to attend a cousin's wedding across the country because you anticipate emotional turmoil that may put a damper on the book that claims the center of your world. In the case of my current novel, I first approached the subject matter many years ago, gathering the research when my two children were little, and when I could not sell if from a proposal as my agent had originally suggested, I had to put the book aside. It was just too much of a juggle. Instead, I wrote a contemporary comedy of manners that had fewer moving parts and the result was my first published novel: Playdate.
Writing novels is a labor of love and obsession. And it's a study in delayed gratification.
In contrast, a career writing articles and reviews, if done right, can deliver instant gratification – and a steady paycheck hopefully with medical benefits. You write a review for a newspaper or online site, and there it is, with your byline. I remember the first review I wrote for the New York Post of Robert Altman's Short Cuts with Julianne Moore: I found a newspaper shop in the East Village near St. Mark's place where the big bundle of papers arrived late the night before publication. There it was in my hand. Tangible! Joy: my byline, my photo! And I was ready to write the next one and the next, and ultimately to interview Julianne Moore years later across a small table at a Greenwich Village café on the eve of her Oscar. Reviewing and interviewing can be challenging, as can working regularly with editors and navigating office politics, but that path has also been very enjoyable and rewarding for me.
One of the biggest things that being a journalist taught me was to write fast, sure and trust in your voice – and hit a deadline whether it's two hundred pages in ten weeks or a thousand words by tomorrow at 9 AM.
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