This iconic phrase comes from a movie wherein three people in a Jeep are about to be eaten alive. Can you picture the scene? Can you see the dinosaur’s head in the side mirror, with the little message on the bottom: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR”?
Do you ever feel like that sometimes as a writer? If you don’t go faster, the world of writing and consumerism will eat you alive? While you’re writing your second or third book for the year, another author just published his or her eighth?
In a world with things like binge watching, fast passes, and freaky-fast food deliveries, it seems everything has to happen yesterday. Procrastinate a day, and you’re a week behind. So, we combat those assaults with personal and group-oriented binge-writing events. Pay good money for formulas on how to write a novel in thirty days. Some authors even go so far as to have someone else write the novel for them (with their input, of course). That’s how some famous authors can publish 13-14 novels a year.
But I have a question? If you could write a great novel or a good novel, which one would you choose? Do you like wearing mass-produced shoes, or hand-crafted ones? Would you rather eat frozen, store-bought pizza or freshly hand-made pizza from a local pizzeria? Do you like adorning your house with hand-made wooden furniture, or the kind made out of particle board with the plastic veneer? I think you see where I’m going with this.
Little in this life worth having and cherishing was made quickly. That’s not to say a good novel cannot be written in a mere few weeks. A Christmas Carol was written in about six weeks. And that’s not to say good writing cannot come from the computer of a person who types 40,000 words in a cloistered weekend. But those works are the exception, not the rule.
In most cases, however, good writing comes from careful word choices. Meticulous research. Edit upon edit. But it also comes from a story not quite told that way before. A tale that is a little different from the rest in its telling. Not a formula wherein the names and places are interchangeable, and the story is just like the previous one. Not a cookie-cutter pattern of rising action, climax, and happily ever-after. Good writing stretches the mind of a reader. It pokes them when they expect a slap. It needles them when they thought you were about to unload whodunit. It screams at them when they puckered up for a kiss.
If you can do all of that and more and still accomplish 40,000 words in a weekend, then you have my applause. But for most people, it’s not about the number of words thrown at the pages, it’s about the words placed on the pages themselves. It’s about how they are arranged. How they emote. How they live.
In a world drowning in books, it’s usually the dead ones that rise to the top. Those that have weight and merit and depth and life are the ones that withstand the tides of time, surviving even the harshest of droughts, to become the water upon which thirsty souls may find respite. If you don’t believe me, get a group of people together and see if they can name ten New York Times Bestsellers from 1990-2000 that are still recommended reading today and will probably be on recommendation lists for decades to come…like the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or Earnest Hemingway are recommended. (Good luck.)
Do you see my point? “Faster” isn’t always better. Neither is “Popular.” For faster and popular often look like a flare in the night sky. Easily seen and easily forgotten.
So, write well, my friend, so that your writing may become a well readers will want to come back to time and time again.
To see this article on the Seriously Write website, click HERE!
