Over dinner a few weeks ago, my husband and I were discussing an idea for a screenplay he’s had for many years. “A novelist and a screenwriter in the same household,” I laughed. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“I don’t want to be a screenwriter,” he said.
“Don’t you want to write the screenplay?”
“I want to write the screenplay. Never said I want to be a screenwriter.”
It was in that moment that my life, my career, sort of started making sense to me. Because the difference between my husband and me is the difference between someone who wants to be a screenwriter and someone who wants to write a screenplay.
I am the former; my husband is the latter.
I realized, that evening, how all the writing advice out there doesn’t take into consideration this nuance. We all assume that the writer we’re talking to is an aspiring novelist, essayist or journalist. We don’t consider that we may be talking to someone who just wants to write that one novel, essay, or article. We don’t consider that we may be that someone who just wants to write that one novel, essay or article. And this distinction is important because how you approach your writing career should definitely be informed by which of those categories you fall into.
If you want to be a journalist, you’ll need to approach your career differently than if you want to be a novelist but just want to write articles to supplement your income. Maybe you want to be both. Maybe you’ve been a happy journalist once, and like me, now want to practice journalism every now and again while you become something else—a novelist, in my case.
Because here’s the thing: I don’t want to write a novel. I completely empathize with people who say they feel barren after finishing a book because they’re waiting around for ideas, but that’s not me. I’m not that person. In the time it took me to find an agent for my first novel, I had already written a quarter of my second. I have an outline for a third and an idea for the fourth and the fifth. I’m not kidding around; this is a long-term plan for me. Whether or not my first novel sells, I will write the second. I will write the third. I hope I will continue writing them until the point at which they start selling. Because I don’t want to write a novel; I want to be a career novelist.
This is personality, partly. But it’s also a choice.
The other choice is equally honorable. There is nothing wrong with just wanting to write that one novel so you can get it out of your system. While I want to be a career novelist, I’m also pretty certain that I no longer want to be a journalist. I want to report and write articles, yes, but I don’t want to be a journalist. I want to write essays, but I don’t want to be an essayist. I want to run a business, but I don’t want to be an entrepreneur.
My husband, too, has decided that this is what his screenwriting career will be—that one movie that just doesn’t leave him alone. Will there be more? Who knows, there might. There might not. But he’s approaching it with the understanding that he’s only got the one in him and that’s fine. Because he knows this, however, he’s not going to quit his job to work on that screenplay. He is aware that once it’s done, there may not be others.
I, on the other hand, do know there will be others. So I have made the decision to put aside other writing work and projects for now in order to put more time and effort into books. I’m taking a bigger gamble, because I’m hoping for the bigger payoff.
I think it can be helpful to make these distinctions in your mind because it will change the way you look at your writing career and the way you make your decisions. For instance, my plan is to have 75% of my second novel finished before my agent goes out to sell the first one. This is to ensure that if we get a fantastic advance (always good to hope, right?), then I won’t get paralyzed by the expectations, and that if it doesn’t sell at all, I won’t get defeated to the point where I can’t work on the next one. If it’s almost there already, both the paralysis and the disappointment can be easily overcome. I’m in it for the long haul, therefore I’m making sure that the success or the failure of my work doesn’t impede in the actual making of it.
The day after the revisions for my first novel are done, I will get right back on to the second. My husband, however, will probably not start on the second project until he’s had a movie sold, made, and reviewed.
They’re both valid ways. But you do have to make a choice.
Do you know which one is yours?