Learning to Write a Novel by Doing
On the long, steep, winding road to Liberated, plus book picks
You know how in movies, the author types up the last page of their first-draft manuscript, delivers it to their publisher, and it magically appears in bookstore windows — all seemingly in a span of weeks?
It’s nothing like that in reality. For my novel Liberated, it took nearly 18 years.
In Liberated, an American captain in post-WWII Germany, Harry Kaspar, must stop a criminal conspiracy by his fellow officers in an isolated small town. The novel was finally published in 2014 — my second novel published and the second in my Kaspar Brothers series.
The story also comes from the very first manuscript I ever tried writing many years ago, well before my other books.
Naive meets stubborn meets obsessed
Have you ever met someone who really, really loves doing something but they’re not very good at it? That was me, once. It’s all of us novel writers, really. Because there’s no way around the brutal process of writing and rewriting a novel and learning from yourself and others until you’ve finally distilled the thing into something readable.
It all started in 1996. Something, likely a good novel I read from an author such as Martin Cruz Smith or John le Carré, gave me the idea that I should play around with a fiction story. For my master’s in history, I had researched the early days of the US occupation of Germany. I discovered how chaotic that period could be, filled with tales of corruption and plundering, but it wasn’t the kind of tale that the often dry and safe historical records and reports conveyed well.
I could make stuff up, I realized, using actual events and characters to serve the story.
I had no experience writing fiction. I was fast nearing 30. But playing around with a story quickly became an obsession that ended in a full draft manuscript. I absolutely loved the process and could not stop. I was getting up before dark to write before work, and at lunch, and sometimes even sneaking in a few minutes while in my cubicle. I thought I might be one of those lucky people who found what they love to do.
The only problem was, like any first draft, and especially from a first-time writer, it was a pile of crap. I got feedback from a kind local writer, who had me send it to their agent, who kindly told me that the manuscript was not good enough but they did encourage me to keep writing. And so I did.
My next draft was a pile of crap, too, I’m sure of it. I can’t look at those early drafts. I kept getting feedback from local editors, took classes, joined a couple writers’ groups, and kept rewriting.
I meanwhile queried many literary agents, who mostly sent form rejections but sometimes gave me helpful feedback. Publishing demanded so much mailing 25 years ago! Some of you writers reading this might remember the SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), or standing in line at the post office? Good riddance to that.
Pseudo success beckons
Around 2000, I eventually landed a literary agent, to my great surprise. He started pitching the novel, then titled Reparation, to big publishers. My agent, a nice fellow, was fairly new to the agenting game but sounded ambitious and fairly optimistic.
Oh, how naive I was. In my excitement, I quit my day job and tried to go freelance, which was a bust. Don’t quit your day job.
That agent, after many near misses, finally reported to me that we nearly had landed a big solid deal at a major publisher. But it fell through. All it took was for one person to walk in or speak up in a meeting to nix a book’s chances. That disappointment broke my agent — as it turned out, I was his last chance. He left agenting after that.
Just getting started
In the early aughts, I had other ideas for books, but I realized I needed to work on my craft even harder if I was really going to keep doing this because I loved it.
By this point, I had given up on writing jobs in marketing, advertising, and a promising career path with the Associated Press. I could’ve gone back to a similar day job. Instead, I decided to work in a café a few days a week so that I would have more time to work on my craft.
My self-imposed training was supposed to last a couple years, tops. It went on for at least seven. This was my period of learning by doing. I worked constantly on my craft. I drafted many of the manuscripts that made it to publication today and others that never should.
Digging deeper
In 2006, I was as surprised and thrilled to land my current agent Peter for this same manuscript. The title was The Liberator then and I had restructured, revised, and rewritten the story many times.
I was still just getting started. Peter, intrepid, encouraging, and skillful as ever, tried and tried and got close a few times to find a home for the book. But we couldn’t get the publisher we wanted.
I kept rewriting the manuscript between drafting others. The story gained more similarities to the current published Liberated. The novel had been in third person. To intensify my main character Harry’s drive, I changed the voice to first person.
I also had a revelation. While drafting a novel called The Losing Role, which I self-published in 2010, I realized that Harry and the main character Max from The Losing Role were brothers! This led to the Kaspar Brothers series.
In the early 2010s, Peter urged me to take the story in Liberated even deeper, darker — the kind of tale where the main character puts everything on the line, literally, even his life, one to one against his antagonist.
I went there, and Peter was right of course. I felt like I’d finally reached the story calling to me from somewhere deep in the back of my brain and heart and gut way back in 1996.
Finally, a breakthrough
Around 2013, Peter placed many of my books with a traditional publisher. This was not a big fancy deal, but it was a way to get my books out there since I had a lot of manuscripts piling up at that point. And I now have a committed new publisher, Open Road, who re-released Liberated this year.
In a way, despite all the frustration, I felt relief that it hadn’t happened sooner. Because the truth is, Liberated was never really ready until that last version where I dug the deepest. It was time to let it go, out into the world.
Back in 1996, if you had told me how long and hard the process would take to learn all this by doing, I’m not sure I would’ve committed to it. I know one thing: I could not have done this without my wife René, who always supported my need to do this thing I love.
If you’re reading this and think you want to write novels or anything creative, here’s my advice: Do not do this unless you really, really love it. Because it will suck. And it will hurt. So it has to be worth it to you. It will also change your life, and it will blow your mind in the best of ways.
And the longer you do it, the better it gets. I promise.
Now go do it!
Liberated covers from 2014 and 2023:
PS: In an upcoming post, I’ll share the wild true stories that inspired Liberated.
New: Random book picks
Starting with this post, I’ll briefly share a book or two that I’ve read and enjoyed, whether recently or in the distant past and in no particular order.
Let’s start with True Grit (1968) by Charles Portis. Who can’t love the main character Mattie Ross? Young Mattie has one of the best voices in fiction. She’s just fourteen when a coward shoots her dad dead and takes his horse and $150. Mattie’s not going to let that go unpunished. She leaves home to take revenge, teams up with tough US Marshal Rooster Cogburn, and pursues the killer into Indian Territory. Mattie should be way in over her head and is. But Mattie’s always the boss. Portis tells the headstrong Mattie’s quest in an engaging first-person style and fills the story with great historical details. Do yourself a favor and give it a go.
In a completely different vein, I loved Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2010) by Karl Marlantes. It’s a fantastic, powerful, and gut-wrenching anti-war novel, for me one of few “big” books (aka large marketing budget) that truly lives up to its reputation. Written by a fellow Oregonian, who apparently spent 30 years on the novel and was rejected for publication many times. I know the feeling!
Excellent idea. Find a vocation where you can be your own best customer.
Brilliant idea!