An instruction manual to avoid suffering writing that first book
Writing a book is a noble endeavour in the same way wrestling a bear is a noble endeavour. It’s theoretically impressive, but mostly a terrible idea that ends with you flat on your back wondering why you ever thought you were qualified. I started out with enthusiasm, a fresh notebook, and the belief that writing a novel would be fun. Cute, really. Like watching a toddler put their favourite toys in a backpack and announce they’re moving to space.
But through perseverance (and the sort of stubbornness generally reserved for mules and evangelists of cryptocurrency) I learned a great deal. Mostly by doing everything wrong first.
Here, for your amusement and my emotional closure, are some of the bigger mistakes I made writing a book.
Waiting for Inspiration Like It Was a Delayed Train
I used to believe inspiration would arrive magically, like a Victorian governess appearing at the door with impeccable timing and moral clarity. Instead, I’d sit at my desk, staring into the abyss, hoping for a lightning bolt.
Some days inspiration did arrive. But it seemed to come only after I’d already written three pages of nonsense. It turns out inspiration is not the spark that starts writing; writing is the spark that eventually annoys inspiration into showing up, sighing loudly, and saying, “Fine, here’s an idea, stop whining.”
Inspiration is not a muse; it’s a grumpy roommate.
Believing I Could Write a Book on Sheer Vibes Alone
For some time I scribbled away with the faint hope that if I wrote enough sentences, eventually a plot would form out of pity.
It did not.
At one point my story had taken so many unexpected turns that even I became lost. (And I was the one who was allegedly in charge.) I found myself flipping back through chapters thinking, “Who is this character? Why are they here? Have I invented a subplot without noticing?”
Outlining a Moon Landing
Early in the process, I decided I needed an outline. A sensible decision, you’d think. I plotted every chapter, every twist, every moment of character evolution, like a hostage negotiation diagram. I even gave one character a preferred lunch order, which I assumed would be vital later. (It was not.)
By chapter three characters were wandering off-script, making increasingly odd choices, flirting with people I hadn’t authorised them to flirt with, and generally behaving like actors in a late-stage improv class. I spent months forcing them back onto my outline, until I realised that outlining is a guide, not a dictatorship. So I redrafted my outline. About six times.
Believing the First Draft Should Be Good
I genuinely thought I’d sit down, crack my knuckles, and produce something that could be placed directly onto a shelf between Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro.
For a long time, I clung to the delusion that the first draft should be clean, elegant, structurally perfect. You know, the sort of thing your English teacher would hold up and say, “Now this is what the rest of you should aspire to.” In fact, mine looked a crime scene.
Once I made peace with it (once I accepted that a first draft exists solely to prevent the story from living only in my head and causing an electrical fire) everything got easier. Not good, mind you, but easier.
Editing While Writing
I fell into this trap hard. Each morning I’d open yesterday’s chapter thinking I’ll just tidy up it a little. Three hours later I’d find I’d polished a single paragraph until it gleamed like the toilet bowls in an army barracks — and written exactly zero new words.
It was like trying build a house, starting with wallpapering the living room before I’d even poured the foundation. I think I spent the better part of one day revising a single metaphor. A metaphor I might add that didn’t survive the final draft.
The day I stopped editing while drafting was the day my productivity quadrupled. It was also the day my draft quality dropped so dramatically that even my computer gave me a look. But it got written. And that, ultimately, is the only goal of a first draft: existence.
Overthinking Every Sentence
My approach was like drafting the Declaration of Independence. I spent so much time agonizing over whether a comma should breathe or a semicolon should strut that entire paragraphs froze in existential limbo.
I’d rewrite a single line a dozen times, each version slightly worse than the last, until I convinced myself I’d invented a new form of literary torture. In the end, I realized that obsessing over minutiae wasn’t making the book better. It was just making me miserable
Sometimes, done is better than perfect. Even if done looks to you like two ferrets have danced the tango over your keyboard.
Letting Self-Doubt Sublet My Brain
If my brain were an apartment building, self-doubt would be the noisy tenant who blasts music at 3AM and insists the rent is too high. It moved in the moment I typed the first sentence, unpacked all its emotional baggage, and started redecorating.
At one point I genuinely believed I’d become allergic to writing. I Googled the symptoms. Unfortunately, WebMD didn’t support my theory, insisting instead that I probably had cancer. (Classic WebMD.)
Eventually I learned to treat self-doubt like cold callers. You simply have to ignore it unless it becomes persistent, at which point you tell it firmly you aren’t interested in switching energy providers or abandoning your novel.
Comparing My Draft to Finished Books
A deeply foolish habit. Every time I read a brilliant novel, I’d immediately compare it to my draft to something I’d read and liked, and conclude that my manuscript should be placed inside a rocket and fired directly into the sun.
Comparing your unfinished book to a published work is like comparing the raw ingredients of a cake to a three-tier wedding masterpiece. Of course mine looked worse. I was still at the stage of dropping eggs on the floor.
But it took far too long for this logic to sink in. Until then, I oscillated wildly between despair and the faint hope that maybe Dickens also spent 70% of his drafting time muttering nonsense into a mug of lukewarm tea.
Going It Alone
I clung to the notion of being a lone artistic genius. A Hemingway. A Woolf. A hermit locked in a room with nothing but a laptop and bowl-shattering anxiety.
When I finally asked for feedback (from friends, beta readers, anyone who had once read a book and possessed opposable thumbs) things improved instantly. Yes, some comments stung. (“I’m not sure what’s happening here,” they’d say, about a paragraph I personally believed should be engraved in brass.) But it was worth it.
Writing may be solitary, but books are communal. I’ll remember that going forward.
Forgetting That Writing Should Be Fun
Somewhere in the maze of revisions, cuts, rewrites, and minor identity crises, I forgot that I once loved writing. Loved it so much, in fact, that I willingly embarked on this fool’s errand.
The rediscovery happened unexpectedly. I was writing a scene I thought would be tedious, one character said something that made me laugh. A laugh I hadn’t planned, hadn’t expected, hadn’t coaxed into existence. It came from them. And I remembered: oh yeah, this is absurd. And joyful. And weird. And I get to make it up.
That’s the magic. The rest is paperwork.
Mistakes Aren’t to be Avoided
If writing a book has taught me anything, it’s that mistakes aren’t the detours. They’re the map. Every misstep, every wrong turn, every chapter that reads like a surrealist fever dream is part of the process. A deeply inefficient, emotionally destabilising process, but a process nonetheless.
Mistakes Aren’t to be Avoided
Brilliance often begins with garbage.
Books aren’t finished by the perfectly disciplined or the effortlessly talented. They’re finished by the wildly determined. They’re written by people who keep going long after their rational brain has packed its bags and moved to Portugal.
If nothing else, remember this: If I can finish a book after all these mistakes, you can finish yours. Because while I may not be the best writer, I am unquestionably among the most stubborn.
Which, as it turns out, is the only qualification you really need.
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.