There are three rules for writing a book
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are
This newsletter is going to be a bit more sporadic over the next six months as I get into the final sprint on my next book. This is my fifteenth book, and the various stages are familiar to me now. The one I’m about to enter is the one where I get very focused, very single-minded, and very boring: I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to do anything, I don’t have much to talk about, I’m kind of an empty shell by the end of the day. (My husband is going to read this and wonder how this is different from any other stage of book-writing, or not-book-writing, that I am ever in.)
It’s been almost thirty years since I started writing my first book. In all that time, I should’ve learned much more about the book-writing process than I have. Every new book feels impossible, and I struggle every time to remember how it’s done.
My first book was a memoir about my garden in Santa Cruz. After that book came out, I got to know Carl Klaus, whose garden diary My Vegetable Love had just been published. Carl founded the nonfiction program at the University of Iowa and I went out to Iowa City a couple of times to visit him. On one trip, I was complaining about revision process. I told him that I had to throw away the entire manuscript of both my first and second book (the second was The Earth Moved, a book about earthworms), and start again from scratch. I hated doing it, I told him, but my first drafts were absolutely unfixable. It wasn’t until I’d written a 300-page hot mess that I had any idea at all how to actually write the book.
“Oh, I know what kind of writer you are,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of writers come through here over the years, and there are two kinds. There are the ones like you, who don’t know what the story is until you’ve written it. So you just have to make a huge mess on the page and then start over. Then there’s the other kind of writer, the one who does lots of preparation and outlining and research first. They don’t start writing until they know exactly what the book will be, but then it comes pretty quickly.”
“I want to be that other kind of writer,” I told him. “That sounds much better.”
“Oh, you can’t change,” he said. “You’re either one or the other.”
“Watch me,” I said.
And I did. I completely changed my writing process. Carl wasn’t wrong about much, but he was wrong about that. It turns out that you do get to decide what kind of writer you are.
For my third book, about the global flower industry, I decided that I would do all the research first. I wouldn’t write a word until I knew exactly how the book would be structured and what kind of story I was trying to tell. It helped that I’d just signed with a new agent who insisted that I write a very detailed, professional book proposal. It took a few months to put that together. By the end I had a road map of exactly where I’d go, who I’d interview, and what I hoped the overall gist of the book would be.
For a year I traveled around to Latin America, Holland, and a few places in the US where I could interview people about the flower industry. I hung out in a flower shop on Valentine’s Day. I read reports and dug into the early history of florists and flower-growing. I bought flowers, I grew flowers, I thought about flowers for a year.
And when it came time to write the first draft, it wasn’t a hot mess. It was pretty close to what I eventually published. That’s how I’ve done every book since then, even the novels.
For the book I’m writing now, I’ve spent the last year (18 months, really, if you start counting from the day I began noodling away at the proposal) reading books, interviewing people, traveling around, scrolling through endless old digitized newspapers, and digging through archives. I keep every scrap of research, from interview recordings to newspaper articles to old letters, in Evernote. As of today I have about 2200 records on file, not counting the books or many of the photos or videos I’ve taken.
It’s all pretty well organized, because I’ve learned how to tag all those records according to the themes that start to emerge as I’m doing the research. For instance, pretty early on I could see that legislators tend to make wisecracks about state birds when the bills are up for a vote. So I started adding the word “joke” to every file with a good zinger in it. Seeing those patterns, understanding what I’ll want to come back to later, is one of many reasons why I’ve never hired a research assistant. Looking for this stuff, finding it, thinking about it, categorizing it—that *is* the work. A painter couldn’t hire out her walks in the landscape or her preliminary sketches. I couldn’t hire out the research.
The research phase is also scattered, loose, unfocused. I can be distracted. I can do more than one thing at a time. I can put it down and fly out to Atlanta or Philadelphia to give a talk, then come home and pick it right back up again. I can have a social life and hobbies. I can write this newsletter. I can blow off work because it’s a beautiful day or because I don’t feel good.
I wouldn’t want to work more efficiently if I could. Pushing away all those distractions and banging through the research in six months of 60-hour workweeks just wouldn’t get me the same result, because I also need chronological time to pass. I have to get away from it and think about it, and also not think about it, and give it time to come together.
But there’s always a deadline looming, and my deadline is January. Between now and then I have one more book-related research trip, and a vacation, and the holidays. To finish this book on time, I’ll need every single day I have left in the year. I can usually write a thousand words a day, which gives me a draft in three months, but this is a research-heavy book with a lot of facts to double-check. There might be a lot of five hundred-word days ahead. I have to start now.
I’ve always resisted the writing-is-like-being-a-mother metaphors because I think it diminishes the staggering labor and sacrifice of motherhood. Once in a while, someone will ask me if I have children and when I say no, they’ll say, “Your books are your children.”
“Not really,” I tell them, “I get paid to write books, and I’m free to abandon them if they’re not working out.”
Sometimes an audience member will ask if I have a favorite among my books, or would that be like choosing a favorite child. Usually I play along. “Well I’m not a parent,” I’ll tell them, “but I think it’s exactly like that. Your newest one is always your favorite, right?” They all laugh. It’s true, isn’t it?
I also try to resist the book-writing-as-childbirth metaphor. Sitting in my clean, quiet office tapping at a keyboard is nothing like what goes on in those stirrups, if the 127 episodes of Call the Midwife I’ve seen are any indication.
But I have to say that this phase, where I can feel the deadline looming, where I can see the end of the research around the corner, where I know it’s time to cancel my social obligations and turn off my phone and put down my hobbies and do my thousand words a day—this does make me think ever so slightly of going into labor. There’s an urgency to it. It’s time to become very boring and single-minded, and to put all my attention into holding this entire story in my head at once, so that I can pour one one-hundredth of it onto the page every single day until I’m done.
I’ve said nothing so far about the revision and editing process, which is the most important part and something I also like to handle in a very particular way. Maybe I’ll come back and opine about that when I get closer to it.
Meanwhile—off I go into my cave. You’ll hear from me now and then, whenever I have something worth sharing. And I’m going to keep sending out the art lessons to supporters, because if I don’t do a fun little art project now and then I might really go mad.
p.s. The quote at the top actually goes “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” Also unfortunately, no one seems to know exactly who said this, although it might be Somerset Maugham.
Supporters are painting like Hockney
Last week, we looked at David Hockney’s Yorkshire sketchbook and how he painted these very quick, not-for-show sketches. He filled a sketchbook in a month (and perhaps others that same month, we don’t know) in addition to whatever larger paintings he was working on, and all the other duties that go along with being David Hockney.
Why not sketch like Hockney? This week I’m painting the view out my window, and I invite you to do the same. Supporters get one of these every week, plus access to the full archive. Take a look!
The Bit at the End
Salt Lake City! I’ll be speaking about my new book, The Tree Collectors, at Red Butte Garden & Arboretum on Thursday, July 17. Tickets available here.
Did you know I have a reader survey? It’s a fun set of questions. You might enjoy it!
Come find me on Instagram, or see paintings for sale- Right here
Order signed copies of some of my books from my husband’s bookstore, or order my books and many books I love at Bookshop.org
Take one of my online writing or art classes here
Leave a comment! I love to hear from you.
" A painter couldn’t hire out her walks in the landscape or her preliminary sketches. I couldn’t hire out the research." Love this, Amy! And your paintings in this post are fantastic. I also love the challenge/idea to paint what's out my window - I'm going to do it, too! Thanks for the inspo! P.S. Congrats on your current book's progress. What a rock star.
The way you’ve explained this is so similar to my painting process. Sometimes I wish I was more intuitive and painted spontaneously without any planning, but those painting are always harder and more of a hot mess than the ones I sketch out and plan in advance!