How to Write a Groundbreaking Novel

Recently, one of my readers asked me how he could create a groundbreaking novel. (No, I have not produced my own groundbreaking novel, but maybe I will someday.)

Anyway, here is my response:

Basically, I think there are no shortcuts. It takes hard work, and ideally, you can find a mentor or someone to help guide you. Yet ultimately, you must be willing to find your own voice or path. You cannot allow your true self to go into hiding. You should not become a miniature version of anyone else, as this will forever put you in their shadows.

An exercise I like when writing is to find books that you admire as truly great works, then rewrite them in your own way. This is just a creative exercise and to help improve your writing abilities. Of course, you should never attempt to publish anything that you rewrite.

When we read, it is too passive. If you rewrite, you will truly absorb what the author did and learn the techniques more deeply. By rewrite, I mean going sentence by sentence through a full novel and then rewriting them all in your own way, but trying to keep the same idea that the author intended.

In doing this, you may begin to discover your own style and interpretations. You may even realize that you have certain flaws that you need to work on.

Of course, this is just an exercise, and it can only take you so far.

To produce something revolutionary will likely mean that you have attained a deep and great understanding of humanity. How could you write something that connects to so many people if you do not truly understand those people? This is done in many ways - through connecting with people in your life more deeply, reading (particularly in your genres of interest), watching films, etc.

Ask yourself who you truly want to connect with. To say all of humanity may be too grand of a scope. It could help to think smaller, at least to begin. Do you want to connect with soldiers? With working moms? With people who want to save the planet? With those who struggle to find meaning in life? With those who suffered great tragedies? With the broken-hearted? Who is it?

Learn about people as deeply as you can if you want to produce artwork that inspires, heals, or provokes them in some way. Leonardo da Vinci is a great example. He was not satisfied with simply creating a drawing or painting that appeared lifelike. He wanted to truly bring it to life as much as was possible. To do this, he studied anatomy. And to do that, he was willing to do what no one else probably was. He dissected cadavers and drew humans from the inside out so that he could learn about everything that was beneath the surface. To draw and paint more realistically, he felt the need to learn more than his contemporaries - and it paid off with the Mona Lisa and his other famous paintings.

If you would like to learn about human nature through a novel, one of my favorite books is Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (An alternate title is Remembrance of Things Past). It is perhaps the world’s longest novel at 6 volumes – and no, I have not finished it. Otherwise, of course, you can study psychology, sociology, and philosophy. You can also work on observing people more closely and experiencing more of life for yourself.

Before you jump headfirst into creating your great work, you may have to admit to yourself if you are not ready yet. It may be best to work on some practice runs, to see what you are capable of. For example, rather than writing your full novel, you may start with some short story ideas. I believe many of the greatest writers produced their best works later in their career, after having gained a lot of experience writing and also experience in life. There is nothing wrong with building experience so that you can produce your great work later.

Do not be in such a rush to do everything now. You may need to train, build your skills, and learn more deeply before you can produce your greatest work.

Perhaps as the years go by, you may get frustrated if you have not made much progress on producing your great work. Or maybe you have produced something, but no one seemed to take notice. At some point, you will have to let go of expectations. You can only create your work the best way that you can - you cannot control the reception you will get. Many great works are not recognized until after the death of an author. You have to decide if it is worth it, given that. If you need praise and acclaim to keep going, you may struggle to find your way.

As the years pass, at some point, you may find value in forgetting all that you know and doing things in your own way instead, perhaps tapping into your own soul or deeper spirit. You will have learned all the rules and patterns and ways that everyone else did things, and then you can abandon them all and truly get creative.

To create a dent in the universe, I think the smoothest path is to do something only you could have done. Rather than compete in a space everyone else is working on, create your own space where only you fit. E.g., create your own genre or genre mix, dig deeper into a topic or situation that no one else is considering, or find a new angle or perspective that no one else ever examined.

Although I haven't read it, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves comes to mind. Like it or not, this book seems to have created its own genre space, meaning it has no real competition.

To be groundbreaking, you have to ask what you think is groundbreaking. Do you want to get people to take action on something? To see something in a new way? To experience something more deeply? What is it?

If you want to share new insights that you think no one else has discovered, then you may need to learn more deeply or experience more deeply than anyone else has. You must prepare to sacrifice a lot to get to that point. It may be easier to share insights that others have already shared but to do it in a new way that no one else had ever thought of. Perhaps you will reveal a new perspective or way of thinking this way.

As a final bit of advice, if you find a genre you love and want to work in, read some of the great works in that genre, and then ask yourself what you can add or contribute.

WHEN you produce your groundbreaking work, let me know. I would be happy to check it out!

Latent Creative Energy

I never considered myself to be artistic or creative. It took me a very long time to realize that I had creative energy within me. Most people think they don’t have this, but I think we all had it. We were all born with impressive and creative powers that gradually were lost.

As a young child, I was afraid of my own creative abilities. I didn’t realize that my mind would make things up that were not there. Many children are afraid of the dark, but I was afraid of actual beings and monsters that followed me in the darkness. They were actual, in the sense that my mind created the vivid imagery based on the amorphous, uncertain shapes that hovered in the dark.

Like a Rorschach test (old inkblot image psychological tests where you can see anything in your subconscious through them), the darkness was all a grand Rorschach in my mind, and anywhere I looked, beings and monsters followed. At four years old, I saw Superman fly right by my side, but I was not happy with this. I was scared because he flew too close to me. I didn’t want him to fly into me and knock me over.

As a young child, I could not control my creative energy. These beings, structures, and monsters followed me everywhere in the darkness. I wanted them to go away, but they would not. Through the years, they faded bit by bit. Finally, around 12 years old, they were almost completely gone. I was happy. I was free from their terrors.

Now I wonder, perhaps a big chunk of my creativity was gone with it too. Where did it go? No one knows. As an adult, in the darkness, I see darkness. I can’t see beings and monsters anymore, even if I try.

Where did the creativity go? For a long time, I was lost in the idea that there was a right and wrong way to do things. Buying into this limited me greatly. I began to search for the right answers everywhere, not understanding that the single right way was a mirage. Usually, a problem can be solved in 10 or 20 different ways in the real world. There is no one right way.

Even in art class, the teachers taught us a system, a single right way to produce the type of art they wanted us to make.

One time in the 5th grade, the assignment was to draw a girl's face in our class extremely fast. We were supposed to learn to produce a general idea of an image quickly, even if it was not perfect. The goal was to outline, not reproduce.

I failed to understand this assignment, and instead, I drew incredibly slowly, trying to capture every detail from this girl’s face. I kept looking at my paper and back at her to try to make sure the shapes were all right, that she was properly represented in my drawing.

“We are waiting on you,” the teacher looked at me desperately, as everyone else had finished.

Normally I cared about what the teachers told me, but for some reason, that day, I didn’t care.

What was the point of working on art if I couldn’t do it my way?

I continued, trying to capture everything in painstaking detail.

The teacher looked at me with disapproval, telling me that I was missing the point of the assignment.

A moment later, she moved along to some other task for the class, but I kept working on the drawing, trying to get it right.

I had been taught all my life up to then that there was a right answer for everything. Surely, the right way to make this drawing was to make sure that girl’s actual face could be captured on my page. I saw now that I had to consider the lighting, her expression, what she was feeling even.

I was always a good student, but somehow this task was more important now than all the other classes and facts the teachers had tried to shove into my head.

If I could get this drawing to match up with her face like a picture, perhaps I could show that all my learning had been worth something.

Finally, the class bell rang, and I had barely managed to finish my drawing.

A few students passed by me with remarks such as:

“Wow, that is pretty good,” and “I didn’t know someone in this class could draw.”

The truth was I didn’t know how to draw – I never drew anything, but I just wanted to get it right.

After that, I forgot about art. It left a distaste in me that the teacher had pressured me to do it her way. I decided that, just as with most other classes, this wasn’t worth caring about. I was a sort of zombie student, doing what needed to be done, but not really personally invested in it.

In 9th grade, my English teacher asked us to write some poems. I didn’t have a creative bone left in me, and the girl sitting behind me told me it was easy. She actually wrote me a couple of poems as a favor, and I would take the credit. I was relieved. I really liked that teacher, and I wish I had given poetry a shot then.

In 12th grade, I randomly decided that I wanted to play the piano. Something was drawing me to it. I really liked Billy Joel and couldn’t get enough of his music. And one of his most famous songs is Piano Man. Maybe that had something to do with it.

My instructor was some prodigy who went to college at 14 years old and had traveled the world giving concerts. He ended up settling on a vocation in real estate and teaching students like me in his spare time. I spent a few months learning piano with him. Then, he told me something I had not expected. He told me that I was playing in a way that often took people four years of lessons to get to. After that, I went to college to focus on serious matters and mostly left the piano behind.

I would return to the piano in the summers, learning to play songs from video games, like Phantom Forest, from Final Fantasy 6 (from a popular video game series). Such melodies gave me comfort, and I felt that I could connect more deeply to some feeling that I was perhaps feeling at that time.

I also began writing poetry fervently. I was always looking for inspiration for my next poem. Perhaps some were bad, but I think some were okay, some were actually good. I was in college then, but perhaps similarly as with the drawing of the girl in the 5th grade, I began to feel that these poems were the real work. All of those classes I took were just for a degree, but the writing was what actually mattered. Something had pained me in those years. Honestly, I don’t even remember what, and I suppose poetry was a way to express that feeling.

Then I went to graduate school and had no time for silly things like being creative. Ironically, my research focus was creativity and innovation. This was serious work. I went to class, conducted studies, wrote research papers, went to research meetings and more meetings, presented my research, and so on. There was no time to be creative. Eventually, I left there, and I was motivated to create something.

I began writing poems and short stories. The short stories were often dystopian or absurd.

Again, when I was working on a poem or story, I often had this feeling that this was what truly mattered. Somehow these words on a page and these made-up characters mattered more than other stuff like having a good job, having an intelligent conversation, or acting like an adult.

Then I left it behind and decided to pursue more serious work.

Lately, I have found poetry again, and this somehow seems to get my meaning across better than through my usual writings. I have the feeling again that these poems are what truly matters. If I work at it and get better, perhaps my true message will find its way better through poetry than through my typical ways of communication. We shall see.

When we have creative energy, sometimes we can’t contain it. Where it will take us, nobody knows – but we must let it loose somehow.

Today, I encourage you to look for that creative part of yourself that you thought you had lost. It was always there somewhere waiting for you. Did you always want to create something? Build something? Learn to draw, paint, sing, dance, or write? Why not give it a shot?