Don’t Put Off Creative Writing Until Later in Life–I Regret It

I have always had a desire to write a novel since my early twenties. I had plenty of ideas, but I always procrastinated and delayed starting. When I was younger, written English was never my strongest subject at school—debatable that it is now :-). In fact, I hated English lessons. We had to read books I didn’t like and write essays on subjects I was not interested in. I was also quite stubborn, so if I wasn’t interested in the subject, I didn’t give it a lot of attention. It didn’t help that I did not get on with my English teacher. Looking back, I was the problem and not the teacher. I was young and thought I knew it all.

I enjoyed reading novels, but in my teenage years, I didn’t read as much as I should. I would rather be out with my friends, or playing video games. After I finished university, started my career and settled down in my early twenties, I started reading more books again. I like to read a variety of novels: science fiction, fantasy, spy thrillers, horror. Pretty much most genre fiction novels, although I am not so leen on romantic, or literary fiction; they are just not my thing.

As I read more books, I had ideas for my own stories. I have always had an active imagination, and I loved the idea of being able to write my own stories. Some people want to be rockstars. I liked the idea of being a novelist. As fun as this sounded, I had many excuses for not starting. I regret a lot of these now, but hindsight can help me uncover my regrets.

Intimidated by Other Books

One problem with wanting to start a creative endeavour is that it is easy to compare your ideas to those of others. Whenever I picked up another author’s novel to read, they always struck me by how flawless they seemed. The plots were well thought out. The grammar seemed perfect. Overall, the quality was high. I found that intimidating. How could I ever do the same?

What I didn’t understand at the time was the process an author goes through to write a book. I had attempted to write short stories before, and although I was pleased with them, the writing didn’t seem as good as I was reading in other novels. I just assumed I didn’t have the skills to produce something of the same quality. My short stories were essentially first drafts that I didn’t develop further.

If I had done my research, I would have found out that an author will write a first draft. That draft will not be very good. They will then do a full revision of their work. Then they’ll do another, and another. This revision process could happen many times until the author has a good draft. This revised version is the real first draft. Even then, the book is not complete. If they are signed to an agent and they have sold the book, then the manuscript will go through a further series of revisions with a professional editor. 

Once the publisher’s editor has finished, then there is a final stage which is the final line edit and proofread. Your book could easily go through ten to fifteen revisions before it’s published, along with multiple gate-keepers. No wonder published novels are of high-quality. Over a long period of time, the text has been revised and reworked. Of course, my first draft stories didn’t seem as good. I hadn’t gone through the entire process.

Worried my Ideas are Bad

I thought my book ideas were good, but everyone thinks that of their ideas. I was worried about what other people would think. People can be cruel. You can find reviews on Amazon to see what people really think. Even for popular books, if you look at the one and two star reviews, people can be very nasty, especially when hidden behind an anonymous name. 

Being criticised is scary. Nobody likes it, but now that I am older and hopefully a little wiser, I am not so worried about it. Sure, if I get a bad review and there are lots of other positive reviews, then I just think the book wasn’t to their taste. I now believe that if you do the best work you can, go through the revision steps and use a professional editor, and take their advice, then the product you put into the marketplace will be good. If someone doesn’t like it, well, that’s on them.

I mentioned before that I have released some non-fiction books, so I now have practical experience of this. All the steps I mentioned above about revision, I did with my non-fiction books, and I put out the best books I could. I know they are good, and the reviews are all mostly very good, so if I get the occasional bad review, while it still hurts, I have learnt to brush it off. Provided the reviews are not deliberately offensive, then I try to learn from them.

Scared by the Amount of Work

When I was younger, I was intimidated by the amount of work required to write a book; that was just for the first draft stage. Like a lot of younger people, I wanted instant gratification. I liked the idea of having written a book. I was worried about the amount of work it would take. As someone once said to me, ‘you want to get to the destination, but you don’t want to do the journey.’

I will bet that this is a common problem for anyone looking to tackle an enormous project. As a young man. I was not as experienced in how to plan a large project. With over twenty-eight years of industry experience working on huge software development projects, I would tackle a book project like any of my former career projects: lots of planning, and break the project down into smaller pieces. It’s like that joke, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ That is so true. 

Some writers blame inaction with a project on writer’s block, or the muse not being with them. I don’t agree with that. If you get stuck on one project, work on something else; you can still write. You don’t hear of a car mechanic suddenly getting mechanics block, and can’t work on all those cars that are booked into the garage. When I get stuck on a plot point in my novel, I work on another non-fiction project, or a blog post—like this one.

By focusing on a little at a time, you can complete the project. I experience this firsthand with one of my non-fiction books. It was a business and entrepreneurial book called ‘The Path to Freedom – Starting a Business for the Reluctant Entrepreneur’. The final manuscript was one-hundred-fifty-thousand words. That’s a big book, but I applied the same principle to that book. Working on a small piece at a time. It took eighteen months to write that book, but I wasn’t daunted by the size of the project anymore because I had broken the problem down into much smaller pieces. I believe that if any project scares you, then you haven’t broken it down far enough.

Busy Learning Software Development

Like most career minded professionals in their twenties, I was trying to build up my career in software development. I started my career in the video games industry, and after eight years, I moved into financial services as a software developer, and then through the ranks as a leader. My career wasn’t writing novels, that was just a dream; a nice to have.

Even though I have regrets about not starting a novel earlier in my life, I don’t have regrets about focusing on my career. You need the career to help provide for your family, put a roof over your head and make sure everyone has what they need. Building a stable career is very hard, so while I include career building in my reasons for not starting a novel, this one is justified.

Starting a Family Took Up My Time

I don’t regret building up a decent career, and I also don’t regret having children. I have two kids, Amy, thirteen at the time of this post and my son Daniel, ten. If you are reading this and you have young children, then you understand they are fun, yet very tiring. Bringing up infants is exhausting. Me and my wife found two children hard work. Anyone that can raise three of more children deserves a medal.

As a parent, when you have a little spare time and you want to write, or take part in some other creative activity, you’ll be tired and uninspired. I know I was. This constant level of tiredness also contributed to not wanting to start a novel. All the other reasons I stated in this chapter were the primary reasons, but being tired with children was the perfect excuse, as I don’t really think anyone would argue with it.

Now my children are a little older, they are not as challenging. We do lots of activities as a family, but the kids also want to play with their friends, do sleepovers, play video games etc, so me and my wife find we have more time to do activities together, and also do our own things. For a little of motivation for young parents, it gets easier; I promise. 

Now you know why I put off starting my novel for so long. You have probably read this post, thinking these are just excuses for inaction. You would be correct, they are. That’s why a lot of them are regrets, and I hope I can save you from the same problem. At the time of writing this post I am forty-five and I feel like I have wasted a lot of writing time. Don’t make the same mistake.