I reread sentences from novels I feel you can’t kick a hole through, meaning novels I feel have no holes narrative-wise. I’ve used the phrase “can’t kick a hole through” certain novels in other posts, but it’s not anything I’ve heard other writers say when they’re talking about well-done fiction. For me, the term makes sense. I’ve said it about Lehane’s Mystic River, Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Midnight’s Children, by the great Salman Rushdie. And the way I write, the way I look at things, in what I want to accomplish in my own fiction, is exactly that: I want to write novels that you can’t kick holes through. Novels that have no “holes” either in the words chosen, the dialogue spoken between characters, the plots and subplots, the scenes, and honestly just the way you feel during and after you’ve read my work. Of course, I’ll never get there—no writer does. But the best I can do is what I’m striving for. Not good. Not excellent (although I’ll take it). I want to write novels and fiction you can’t kick through. I guess in literary agent speak, I want to write fiction that has nothing in it a literary agent can point to and say, “this is where I say ‘no’.”

But that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Writing something that an agent or your beta readers can kick holes through? And how is it we get there? I mean, unless we’re a prodigy like S.E. Hinton, who started writing The Outsiders when she was fifteen. The movie, about rivals gangs the Greasers and Socials in rural Oklahoma, went on to star Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Leif Garrett, Diane Lane, and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Or someone like the author of Eragon (which Christopher Paolini self-published at 18 and was published later, when he was 20, as part of a series, making him the youngest writer to ever do so). Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at 18. It was published when she was 20. But I’m not saying you couldn’t kick holes through any of those novels. You can. These authors just happened to be prodigies (and, as most authors, gifted with a little luck from the literary and publishing gods). So, what is it I’m saying? I'm saying the importance of putting the work into your novel can't be understated.

I’m saying you must put the work into your fiction to get it as close to perfect as possible. I’m saying you spend the time and energy, that you have the fire in your gut to do what needs to be done to get your novel as close as you can to where literary agents, acquisitions editors, publishers, or, if you’re self-publishing, YOU can’t kick holes through the damn thing. Is this an easy task? Nope. Will you want to give up? Yep. Or most of us will, anyway. Most of us will think, well, this is my tenth or fifteenth or even my hundredth draft, and that’s about all I’m willing to do. (I have a novel I’ve been working on for twenty-three years, have edited it over a hundred times, and it still isn’t ready!). The question you must ask yourself, then, is what am I willing to do to make it happen? To write something someone can’t kick a hole through? And do I have it in me?

For me, the answer is yes. I do have it in me. I have one published novel, The Losses, but that’s it. That sucker fell from the literary gods into my lap and got published. I have about ten others in various stages of editing and in the query process, but none I feel is un-kick-a-hole-through-it level. My hope is that I have someone offer to represent one of them who believes in the novel so much that they’ll work (even more) with me to edit what I’ve sort of taken as far as I can take it. Every novel I submit to literary agents has been through dozens of edits. Plus, I’ve workshopped each of them with a group of award-winning published authors during the editing process. I’ve been doing it for going on two decades, though I’ve been writing much longer than that. I’ve also studied and received numerous degrees in writing and literature, more for my understanding of literature than for anything else, though obviously it helps inform my own writing. Like I always say, no author ever writes or publishes the book they envision. We just can’t get there, no matter how hard we try. Our readers? They’re less critical than we are, because they enjoy what we’ve produced. But I don’t know a single author who’s published a novel and, after publication, didn’t want to change something about it. So, here’s what I do to get my novel to where I’m content (not completely satisfied, but content) to send it out on the literary agent query cycle:

I Revise Like Crazy

First drafts for me are easy. The fastest I’ve ever written the first draft of a novel was, I believe, three weeks. Normally it’ll take me a couple months. The Losses took me six months to write, but I had very little to do editing-wise based on the acquiring editor’s input. Again, that was a fluke. But I’ll take it. For me, the first draft’s the easy part of writing a novel. It’s the fun part. It’s the adventure I take where I meet all these new people, many of whom have plenty to say as they audition for a role in my novel (as a writer friend of mine says).

No, first drafts are not where I struggle. My struggle happens in the ensuing work. While I may write a first draft in a few weeks or months, editing drafts of my novels often take me years. I kid you not—years! It’s why I wrote a detailed list of my recommendations on how to self-edit your fiction. But I won’t rehash everything here. Just hit the link on self-editing to deep-dive into my process. It’s a long post, but it’s a thorough post. Let me know what you think, as I hope it helps get you over the hump of not knowing every single thing you need to know to self-edit your book prior to sharing it with other writers or literary agents or even publishers.

So Here’s the Importance of Putting the Work into Your Novel

My friend and mentor, John Dufresne, put it like this when it comes to your work: “No one cares.” And he’s right. No one gives a damn if you’re working on your next short story or novella, your next attempt at the great American novel or some tome you’re writing that’ll compete with Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), his seven-volume, 1.3 million word masterpiece. At all. Maybe your mom cares. Or your grandmother. Maybe you have an agent who likes what you write (and wouldn’t mind making that 15% commission. A publisher who, if you’ve made them money on a previous book, hopes you knock something out sooner than later so they can make a little dough to cover other authors they’ve taken a loss on. Forget all that. Forget them, because while they may like you as a person, they don’t give a shit if you’re writing. Probably, they haven’t thought about it since the last time you spoke to them. And even then . . ..

So, given that, know that there’s no pressure on you to produce. There’s zero eyes on you, waiting eagerly to read what you’re writing. And that means you have all the time in the world to put the work into your novel that’s going to get it as close to un-kick-through-ableness as you possibly can. Which means the onus is on you. If you’ve written a novel, if you’d like to maybe get it published one day, you’ve got to put the work in. You’ve got to write and edit whenever and wherever you can. You’ve got to skip the Friday night happy hours at Applebee’s (you should probably skip them anyway), the extra hour of sleep before work, the trip to Fiji (unless you’re going to edit in one of the Sabeto mud pools or choose not to socialize at the Malamala Beach Club). Work ten hours a day? So what. Have kids? Who cares. Travel for work? Yawn. Your job, if you want to be a writer, is to put the work into your novel whenever and however you can. You must make sacrifices. You must understand that you’re a writer, not someone who wants to have written. And writers? They write. They don’t make excuses for why they haven’t been working on the drafts of their novels. They don’t procrastinate, because they know that the muse comes to the table when you’re writing, not when you’re walking around waiting for her to show up with a virgin espresso martini for you. It’s that simple. The grass doesn’t get cut if you don’t pull out the lawnmower and check the spark plug. Dinner doesn’t get made if you don’t pull the pots and pans and salad spinner out of the cabinets and start chopping. Your car doesn’t move if you don’t fill it up with gas every now and again. And your writing? That shit doesn’t get done either. Not unless you put the work in.

So, put the work in. Make the sacrifices you need to make to devote hours to editing your novel. Or a half hour. Or even a damn few minutes. It’s worth it. Trust me. It’s the only way you’re ever going to feel that next level sense of accomplishment. You know, like the one you felt finishing the first draft. You may have written “The End,” but, in reality, that first draft? It’s only the beginning. So get to work.

Cully Perlman is author of a novel, The Losses. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com 

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