It’s difficult to say “how long” I’ve been writing Radio Head. What’s that, now? Aren’t I writing a fiction novel about a “hopelessly dysfunctional Orange County family unraveling at the seams”? Why yes, but the truth of the matter is that (way back in 200…3?) I queried a few agents with a book idea I had and was pleasantly surprised when a few of them asked for chapters and a synopsis. I’d been advised NOT to write anything until I was certain I had a project someone cared about, and lo and behold, I did. The problem was that I had been happily writing magazine article after magazine article–non-fiction. I was moving into a new role as managing editor at a magazine, building a wine label design biz on the side with a partner–and getting divorced, remarried, pregnant. I knew nothing about fiction writing or where to begin. I froze.

The beginning is the same for many would-be fiction writers–the dream takes flight in childhood, as we write stories with accompanying colored pictures and make up scenes for stuffed animals to play out. There is only one vocation I’ve ever really wanted (aside from motherhood), and that is to be a prolific book writer.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s the one I’ve danced around and never allowed myself to realize. Until this year, that is, when I made the decision to write my first novel.

I had to; the time I’d spent avoiding my dream was more painful than the process of learning the craft of fiction writing. As Susanna Daniel shared in What Took You So Long?The quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing, “The thing is—one-day-at-a-time is the most painful way for active non-accomplishment to happen. It’s the psychological equivalent of death by a thousand cuts…Not just the failure to reach a specific goal, but ongoing, daily failure with no end in sight. Stunted ambition. Disappointed potential. Frustrated and sad and lonely and hopeless and sick to death of one’s self.”

Since Radio Head was the first project I conceived that demonstrated market potential while satisfying my idea of what makes a good story, I will return to it. Daniel had the same experience; “I wrote the earliest bit of what would become my first novel, Stiltsville, in January of 2000, when I was in my first year of a graduate writing program. In May of 2009, I sold Stiltsville to HarperCollins—the hardcover is due out next month.

“This means that the time from my novel’s conception to its appearance on store shelves adds up to a staggering 10 years. An entire decade,” she continues.  “Between, I graduated and spent a year on fellowship (during which I wrote a lot but only half of it was any good); then there were the teaching years (during which I wrote very little, hardly any of it good); then there were the Internet company years (during which I barely wrote at all).

“Stiltsville is in good company, which is reassuring. There are oodles of novels that took a decade or longer to write—including some famous examples, like Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Díaz spoke in interviews about his own decade of active non-accomplishment. He said that five years into the process, he decided to give up on the novel and start a graduate degree (in what, he didn’t say). He said his life improved: no more torture, no more fights with his fiance. Oh, Junot, I thought when I read this, I understand! Still, something pulled him back, and another five years passed, and then he was finally done.

“Writing is hard—writers say this all the time, and I think probably only other writers believe it. But it’s not nearly as hard, in my experience, as not writing.

“Everyone knows that the line between succeeding and failing can be pretty thin. But the fact that it took me so long haunts me less and less these days, and I find myself looking forward instead of back. After all, as every writer is aware, the ending of a story does most of the heavy lifting. It can make or break the whole thing.”

Read Susanna Daniel’s story in full here.

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