Whenever I paint, my biggest problem is knowing when to put the easel and brushes down and walk away from the canvas. But my brain doesn’t know when that is. Maybe it needs more clouds or another tree. Maybe the person needs a little more shading around the neck or more highlights in their hair. And it never fails; at some point I realize I’ve done it. I’ve made it worse. And it proves the point once again that less is more.
It’s the same when I write. I don’t know when to walk away from the keyboard. Even if it has a beginning, middle, and end, I keep thinking there’s something I can add to the story to make it better. And I keep working and adding to it. And just like with painting, there comes a point where I’m doing more damage than I am good. If you’ve ever read a book and thought it dragged out in places and there were a lot of unnecessary points, you know what I mean.
But there is a difference in painting and writing. When you show friends your latest work of oil or acrylic, they are only going to tell you if they like it or not. And yes, most of your friends will lie and tell you it’s awesome even though they have no clue what it is. But none of them are going to pickup a paintbrush and say, “I think it needs a little more titanium white right here.” And if they did, they would be off your Christmas card list.
But that’s exactly what can happen with your manuscript, and you should welcome it. When I finished the manuscript for my memoir, I let my family read it first, mainly so they wouldn’t disown me. My little sister mentioned that I didn’t even explain that our dad never drank. At all. “People will assume he was a mean drunk,” she explained. She had a point, so I did some editing.
When it got to my agent, she called to say this crazy backwards place where I grew up sure sounds interesting and I should have more background on that in the book. Once it got to the publisher, my editor emailed to say she thought it needed another story about my dad in one chapter and my grandmother in another. Both were great suggestions.
But you have to stop writing and let fresh eyes take over. Don’t write a book hoping it will be a certain amount of pages or a certain amount of words. The story is what the story is, and length shouldn’t factor in. My favorite book, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, is only 27,500 words long. It’s a novella and a short one at that. Where the Wild Things Are, one of the most famous children’s books of all time, is only 338 words.
So, write the story that needs to be told and only the story that needs to be told. Then let as many people read it as you can. They’re going to provide feedback from a reader’s perspective, and you might be surprised how helpful it is. To recap, don’t force it, don’t add filler, stop writing, and let others aid in the final evolution.
***
Neal Wooten is a contributor to the Huff Post, columnist for the Mountain Valley News, author, artist, and standup comic. His new true-crime memoir, With the Devil’s Help (Pegasus Crime/Simon and Schuster), is being made into a miniseries. He is also the creator of the cartoon, Pancho el Pit Bull, which is being made into an animated series in South America.