The Right Level

Sometimes I ask myself what it takes to make it to the level I need to reach—which you would think is something I would know inherently, but I ask that question often.

To truly make it in what I’m trying to do artistically, what is the barrier I have to break to make it to the place I aspire to be?

To use a supersonic jet as an example, since they’ve been flying over Colorado Springs for days now, what is the level of craft experience I need to break my personal sound barrier?

I often look at other creators, and not always even in my own medium, but people like Stephen King, who had so many rejection letters that he had to get a bigger nail for his wall, as he famously said in his book On Writing.

Then there’s Eiichiro Oda, the mangaka behind One Piece. His dream, since he was a little child, was to make it into the artistic industry in Japan, which was often frowned upon. It’s not a normal path to take in that country.

And yet he flourished because he never gave up on his dream.

He learned all manner of techniques to draw things with the correct perspective. He learned anatomy. He learned how to make things look as if they were in motion, even though they were still on a page. There are so many aesthetic facets to his art style that bleed through when you know what you’re looking for.

It’s the same way with writing.

Why place that comma where you placed it? Why do any of it in the way you decide to do it? How does one distill a beautiful turn of phrase onto the page? And how many rewrites does it take to make sure something is at an adequate level?

For me, I take my time on my novels not because I believe I can’t put out something immediately, but because I believe in the craft of writing so much that I want it to sing at the end of my attempts. My belief is that prose should be higher than a simple vehicle for telling the story.

I want a particular vision. The resplendent caliber of words to come out that I know I’m capable of creating. I don’t even mean a larger vocabulary when I say this. There’s no sense in tackling an artistic endeavor if you will not go all out on it.

My first novel had some lyrical sections, but it was mostly a mixture of windowpane and lyrical prose. Over the course of my writing projects, I’ve learned that I like lyrical writing, and I like to make the words do something far more than simply tell the story.

I want there to be an atmosphere provided only by the way the prose is written itself.

I want the words to tell the reader something far more than the plain events occurring in the story. Harkening back to Oda, his whole life is breathing, living, and even reluctantly sneaking in food between drawing One Piece.

That man is a legend.

And I look up to him. Now, I’m not the biggest One Piece fan in the world, and I think getting into that series at this point is a monumental task, but that the man would work 20 hours a day on his grand epic is quite inspiring to me.

I don’t have the time to work 20 hours a day on artistic fiction, and I wish I did, but that kind of dedication, I believe, is what it takes to make it to the level I aspire to reach.

I heard that Danielle Steel also works about 20 hours a day. I don’t know if some authors do this continuously throughout their careers or if it’s only when they need to meet a certain deadline, but I’ve always found it quite fascinating.

That is the definition of loving what you’re doing.

When you’re absolutely confident and assured in yourself, and you marry that with enjoying the craft, you’ll ascend to heights most people will never reach.

My thought process is that I also want to get there, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to make it there. But I believe in my abilities.

Not to overstep into the notion that I’m the best writer ever, because I certainly don’t think that, but to get to the level I need to reach, that’s the ethic it takes.

I’m not saying all writers have to work like that. I write thousands of words a day, but that doesn’t mean they’re all impressive words, and often you have to refine them until something resembling proper communication comes out.

Some writers get by with 500 words a day. Others write more than I do. But at the end of everything, when you put it all aside, what really counts is the fact that we’re putting the words out there.

I want to ascend to new levels, not for selfish reasons, but so that other people can be helped by the stories I tell.

Man, it would be amazing to have 20 hours a day where I could write fiction. And that sounds like a lot. It really does.

But it’s a monumental task I’d be willing to take on if I had the time. Don’t get me wrong; there’ll be spurts here and there where I could certainly do something like that, but a lot of my writing is dictation these days, so I don’t know if my voice could last that long.

You’d almost get an entire novel in a day that way. Maybe even more than one.

How clear and meaningful those words would be is another question, obviously, because I still have to go back and type, editing things as I comb through the whole course of the text.

Whether it’s an article, blog post, or novel, you always have to find it within yourself to edit. I don’t believe in turning out a first draft, with one caveat I will mention now.

Don’t get me wrong: there are also some authors whose first draft is their only draft because they edit as they go. When they’re done, they’re done, and I find that beautiful.

But the way I write, that doesn’t work.

There’s only the right way for you as a writer—to be clear—but we do what we are meant to in the way we are meant to.

Contrary to what many believe, I think putting out a first draft, if that’s your method, can actually be just as great as someone’s 60th draft. This is often relegated to the pulpy type of writers, and I’m not being disparaging when I say that. I’m describing the type of stories that move fast and use as brief a description as possible to get the ball rolling.

My concern is with atmosphere, with how the words sound on the page, with the construction of a sentence itself.

The minor details construct the narrative in such a way that, even at the sentence level, the word level, the letter level, the prose is saying a mystery beyond that which is plain.

That’s how I do things.

That doesn’t mean it’s the right way for all other authors. And again, I’m not arrogant enough to think my way is the only way.

But I want to get to the Oda level.

I want to get to the Stephen King level.

That man’s first drafts must look like my own tenth drafts. He’s that good, right? But he’s been doing it for a long, long time. Fifty-plus years is an exceedingly long time to work at your craft.

And we always have to think of it that way. Every single novel we put out, every single piece of writing we get out there, is practice.

I truly refined my writing chops in college, writing extensive essays and papers. I believe my capstone paper at the end of my degree was something like 16 or 17 pages, if I remember correctly.

And I have to say, I don’t think my writing back then was top-tier. But getting those words out of the way, getting the dross through, was ultimately for my benefit. Because it taught me, I could do something.

Then, in February 2019, I was thinking to myself, Man, I really love stories in all kinds of mediums. Why have I never tried to do it myself?

And then I started with an idea, a character, a situation—and started writing.

That first book was a mixture of outlining and discovery writing. But I think it ended up being a decent first novel. My subsequent novels are far better in their execution and understanding of the craft of writing itself, though, so everything past that book is a better sample of what type of writer I am today.

Because I have to say, many darlings were murdered when I wrote Auminous. Many darlings were killed, and it couldn’t be helped.

I was still learning what to do—learning how to construct my paragraphs, how dialogue needed not to sound wooden, and how to differentiate every character with certain accents, qualities, and quirks in their manner of speech.

In the end, I think my first novel was the stepping stone to getting myself where I need to be.

The writer I’ll be in 10 years is looking back at me, going, “You need to get here. But take your time.”

So I don’t want to let him down.

I’m going to make it to that point someday. And I always look to the greats: the Kings, the Abercrombies, the Wynne-Joneses, the Odas, the Toriyamas—all of them.

Even if someone doesn’t share my craft, I can always learn something from them translating well into the novel form.

My drawing is not the best in the world, but I understand perspective in certain ways, and that actually translates to writing well, I believe. The different angles at which something can be viewed help to write a five-dimensional narrative of prose that comes alive because you’re using more than the five senses. You’re using depth to pull people into the scene. And using the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired to truly paint pictures for people.

I have a habit of describing many things, but there are also sections of prose where I don’t describe as much, and I think this makes the most impact because what I’ve learned is that people who are excellent at their craft learn to use minimalism where it makes the most impact and maximalist traits where it makes the most impact, respectively.

That has taught me there’s so much more to learn about my craft.

Every story I write, I choose to practice something. That’s not always decided from the get-go when I start it, but there are many times when I’ll tell myself, “I’m going to practice point of view here.”

“I’m going to use the first-person limited in this novel.”

“I’m going to use compound adjectives in a way that makes fewer words do more, and the like.”

The craft is something I love, and I will always be dedicated to my craft, working meticulously so I can reach the point I feel will be acceptable to my writing vision.

I’m proud of all my novels, but my novels from this point forward, I feel, are the ones where I’m truly finding my voice and finding my ground.

Maybe the secret is putting a microcosm of the 20 hours other artists put in into their work in sections of my time that give me just as viable a result—refining things in the chunks of time I have versus hoping for a day when I can write fiction the whole day.

The amount of drive, work ethic, and skill it takes to soar above the horizon has been paved by those before us.

It is up to us to listen to those voices and emulate the same caliber of profundity, a grand design of our own that will take us to the right level with some time.

Better to wait to become the artist you’re meant to be than to rush out and miss the mechanism to take you there because you were too early by five years.