I've Been Working on a Novel Since 2014; the Doing is the Point
Earlier this year, I wrote about working on a novel that I’ve had bouncing in my head for more than a decade, a thriller set at a Silicon Valley tech company where a new product lays bare corporate and family drama. I was optimistic I’d be able to finish the latest draft this summer, but I haven’t finished it. To explain why, I’ll have to go back to the beginning, to 2014.
I was living in Charlotte, NC, working as a journalist. Because we were in an open office where every conversation could be heard by 20 other people, my closest work friend and I regularly G-chatted about everything, and then actually talked to each other on the days we’d walk somewhere for lunch.
On one of those excursions, we got to talking about adaptations of old stories and applying them to the modern context. Think Ethan Hawke’s “Hamlet” (2000), or “Clueless”. That was the spark. We hit upon an idea that neither of us thought had been told before in this way, that could be extra dramatic, and would work as a sci-fi-tinged corporate thriller. To be clear: I told my friend I was excited enough by the idea to actually try to write it, and he encouraged me.
Flash forward to 2018. The previous year, I’d moved back to California, and for my new job I commuted an hour and a half each way on Caltrain. At first, I spent that time scrolling my phone, but quickly realized I had a prime reading opportunity. I plowed through books and caught up on my New Yorker subscription. But I also hadn’t yet started writing the Silicon Valley story, even though I thought about it often. With so much time on the train, I added writing to my reading routine. First, I wrote a screenplay (that I’ve never shared, and might someday revisit), then I pounded out a first draft of the Silicon Valley story in just a few months.
It was short — novella length — and the biggest thing the experience of writing that first draft taught me is that I did not think about storytelling in novel terms. I had a premise, a precipitating event, some clear complications, an end state for my characters, and a strong opinion about what I wanted my story’s takeaway to be, but I didn’t have a grasp of my characters’ motivations, nor how to bring readers on this journey that felt so clear in my head.
My main character told the story in first person, but I also had flashbacks told in third person that provided different insight on top of whatever the main character observed, and while I thought those bits were important, I couldn’t figure out how to make those shifts feel less artificial. Worse, though I had that end state in mind, I couldn’t figure out how to get there in a way that made any kind of sense with the premise and complications I’d developed — the plot I wrote in that first draft was a rotting fish that I figured I’d just get down and tackle later. After reaching the “end”, I had a series of story parts that I liked, but they didn’t actually complement each other — the whole thing felt like pieces from six different jigsaw puzzles had been mixed in a bin, and one of those puzzles was made of a rotting fish.
It was just a first draft, I told myself. The real writing is always in the rewriting. I’ll wrestle this thing into submission.
Sometime in 2020, I added a bunch of material in a second draft so that it was more of a proper novel length, but the plot still felt janky and glued together. In 2021, I started a new job that didn’t require a long train commute, and while I appreciated less travel, I felt the loss of writing time.
In 2022, I revised again, attempting a dramatic plot revamp for the final act and, necessarily, revising one of the main characters who is core to the story but, also, whose whole deal I still hadn’t nailed down. After this point, the story was better, but still felt incredibly far from finished, let alone polished.
A couple years later, I wrote and eventually published the novel “A Hell of A Wedding,” which is very different in many ways from this other story. The process was also much more straightforward. While I struggled with bits of the plotting and characterization while drafting and revising, it was nothing like the struggle I’ve had with the Silicon Valley story.
This spring and summer, I went back at it hard. I re-read my last draft and took detailed notes, marking spots where there were opportunities for expansion, deletion, or revision. Then I started writing and revising.
Except… I still hadn’t cracked the fundamental plot and characterization problem that bedeviled me in 2018, and no amount of imagining and writing and revising was resolving it. Worse, one of the sci-fi aspects of the story involves a piece of fictional technology that, in 2018, read as something that might be tantalizingly just out of our grasp, but today, in 2026, the technological advance in the story doesn’t sound revolutionary enough anymore to achieve the satirical effect I’m seeking. Therefore, I’ve given up on the story, but only for now.
I’m not sharing more detail about the premise, plot, and characterizations because there’s a chance I’ll come back to it. Maybe, in a couple more years, the world and I will have changed enough that I’ll be able to come up with the ending this story needs. And if not, so be it. The doing is the point, and whether I defeat this monster or not, the experience has changed the way I think about writing and creativity.
Moreover, this isn’t the only idea I have. I keep a note on my phone where I compile my creative project ideas, and right now, there are 11 other premises for stories to write. Some are better than others, but I’m especially excited for the top one, and I plan to start it soon. It’s gonna be so much fun to make.
* * *
Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: "Found Blur Motion" by ilouque. Used under CC BY 2.0 license.)