How Long Does It Take to Write a Novel?

How long does it take to write a novel? I didn't note it on my calendar, but a peek back in time turned up this blog post first referencing what became the seed of my manuscript. The answer, therefore, if you're me and you're writing a 300-something-page novel-in-stories set against society's collapse amid a fast-spreading pandemic, is this: it takes about eight years.

I put the final touches on the last page yesterday. How to describe the feeling of putting a project like this to bed, after every day of the last ninety-five months involved the application of thought to it? It still doesn't feel real.

Friends tipped off about my project's wind-down asked me what near-, medium-, and long-term plans I had for afterward. I hadn't given it a lot of thought. Working on the manuscript occupied significant mental resources. I kept pushing other things aside in order to make room for writing, but the work only involved some actual writing.

Halfway through, in 2015, I drew a little comic about writing on one's feet. I drew a lot of comics that year. Too many, really. Once I realized that, I drew a comic announcing I was done drawing comics for a while. You know, as one does.

I engrossed myself in weird, wide-ranging, seemingly irrelevant research, from survivalism to trangenderism, from satellite navigation to garden irrigation, from neurophysiology to Islamic theology. You've got to turn over an entire library, some sage soul said, to create a single book. That applies to scholarly works and works of post-apocalyptic zombie fiction equally, I discovered.

The characters this research allowed me to write are like parts of my self. I know them intimately — arguably too intimately, since so much of who they are, from their histories to their favorite smells, although known to me, never made it onto the page. Is this the sense that every writer experiences at the end of a long literary journey? These nonexistent characters were alive in my head. As of yesterday, because they have no possible future, they face a type of purgatorial, eternal now, having ceased to be. Is this what parents feel like, sending their kid off to college?

Nature abhors a vacuum. Another project (courting publishers doesn't count) will fill the void left by this one soon enough. I have no plan to force it. It'll come when it comes. Meanwhile, as my latest post on recently read books attests, I have ample leisure reading at my disposal and plan to indulge in it... just in time for summer.

Two Books I Spent My Spring Reading

I wouldn't have thought it would be hard to best my meager reading list from last season — I just had to read more than three books this spring. It didn't happen. One big obstacle (nearly removed) was polishing and sending off the final pages of my novel-in-stories. How can a guy read when he's wrapping up a nine-year literary project? Then the ever-generous Veronica S. surprised me with another order of some delicious-looking sci-fi, and I had to read a couple of the books she so kindly sent.

One was As She Climbed Across the Table, which vindicated Jonathan Lethem completely after the disappointment that was Amnesia Moon. I'm almost ashamed that I ever found fault. This short novel has just about everything one wants in a Lethem book. It has a fanciful premise: a woman falls in love with a incorporeal area of null space. It has quirky wit (such as when the narrator muses, "Do you think there are bootleg tapes of Muzak outtakes? Maybe they get excited by the groove and really cut loose sometimes. And the producer says, okay, boys, that was swell but now let's try to get this wrapped up so we can all go home. I'll bet that happens all the time."). It has outlandish character names (Carmo Braxia, Georges De Tooth, Gavin Flapcloth). And it has emotional sincerity that never devolves into gross sentimentality. Yes, I was pleased.

Neal Stephenson wrote Zodiac, a so-called eco-thriller, just a few years before Snow Crash, his prescient novel about VR and the future of the Internet. Snow Crash and William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic were hugely influential on my growth as a geek, so reading pre-Snow Crash Stephenson risked tainting my opinion. Zodiac has action aplenty, accented by Stephenson's sarcastic wit. But it did pale in comparison to Snow Crash. To be fair, Zodiac, a 316-page novel, took me almost all May to read. I clearly couldn't give it my usual close attention. Even so, a couple of editorial gaffes — extra spaces, a misspelled name, and other such relatively minor typos — leapt off the page at me. This is what happens when you're polishing your own manuscript while trying to read for pleasure. I don't recommend it. It's why I read nothing else this spring. There was other demanding business in my life, which, combined with finishing my novel, demanded maximum focus.

Gavel Club Epic Fail; or, Why Ambition Doesn't Always Pay

It's the morning on which I'm scheduled to speak this month. My speech is well prepared, sure to entertain and inform, and I feel confident that a Best Speaker honor will be mine at the meeting's end. I'm oblivious to the fact that reality's about to prove all these beliefs wrong.

I shake a couple of the other members' hands but don't make it into the meeting room before being pulled aside. The Institutional Activities Coordinator stands in her office doorway, looking terribly stern. Her eyes burning holes through me.

"Are you Case?" she asks. "You're no longer in Gavel Club. You've been removed from the call-out. It's been approved by admin."

My poor, beleaguered heart sinks. I suspect that this has to do with my recent inquiry, via e-mail, into Gavel Clubs' place in Toastmasters' district structure. Our president told me that she'd gotten wind of this and did not approve. But to revoke my membership over it, without any warning? This seems unduly harsh.

In her next breath she confirms my fear. "You had e-mails sent to Toastmasters through an outside party, and that is not allowed. You're out. Go back to your house."

What else can I do but tell the truth? In an even tone, I say, "I understand if I overstepped, and I apologize for that. I didn't know I was doing anything wrong by contacting Toastmasters. Is there any way I can appeal this decision?"

She walks me to the door, in a huff. "Maybe in a year."

A couple of the members watch me, confusion all over their faces, as I exit the hallway. It was challenging fun, gentlemen, I want to tell them, but can't.

This is what happens when you try to do good things around here.