Stop Chasing Success: Write for Wonder Instead
Why novels are an ideal project for bringing wonder into your life
After studying the publishing industry, I had a realization. I wouldn’t even like being a successful writer. It’s too easy to mythologize the writers and the writing process. In reality, the more expectations the publisher has for your book, the more you get pulled into doing marketing and public relations, meaning less time for writing and reading.
What if we’re chasing the wrong thing? We already know fixating on outcomes results in perfectionism, feeling guilty about not being productive enough, which is paralyzing and counterproductive. Even worse, we may work hard only to discover our reward is less time doing the very thing you wanted to do.
Rebecca Yarros has spoken in interviews about how exhausting the book tour was for Onyx Storm. For a mega successful author like Yarros, going the self-publishing route without promotion would feel like failure. Why slow down when you’re on top?
This forced me to reevaluate my reasons for writing. If I wasn’t chasing fame and glory, then why do all this effort? Cal Newport in his newsletter talks about a concept he coined called engineering wonder. It’s a quick read, check it out. He proposes wonder has the antidote to aimlessness. Wonder keeps me coming back to Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It’s also the most enjoyable part about writing.
In this article, you’ll learn how to reframe your novel as a wonder project. Why writing towards wonder makes the writing habit more sustainable and enjoyable.
What Cal Newport Means by “Engineering Wonder”
Cal Newport shares 3 criteria for what makes a wonder project:
Large in scope (ambitious, unreasonably big)
Outside your normal job and family responsibilities
Pursued for the wonder itself, not external rewards
I would argue writing a novel matches these criteria perfectly. He suggests avoiding projects involving screens. Try writing outside the house in a novel and exciting setting to capture the effect.
A lesson I keep encountering as I learn about writing is how reading and writing are both driven by emotions. You may read romance to feel that warm and fuzzy feeling of falling in love. As readers we intuitively know this, even if we don’t think about it consciously.
The same can apply to writing. A good writing session leaves you feeling energized. Not to say it should feel easy. Writing is difficult, you’re supposed to feel uncomfortable, it takes intense concentration over long periods of time. To borrow from the alpine community, writing is Type II fun on the “fun scale.”
Ideally, after writing you’ll feel satisfied having done so. You feel surprised at the associations you created. About the wonder you felt by seeing the world through the eyes of your characters.
Why Success Might Not Be What You Want
So what does “being successful” actually look like? Cal Newport gives the advice to research the job you want to have. That way you’re not inventing stories of what it’s like. Luckily, there’s a ton of information online about what it’s like to be a writer. To research the topic, I read memoirs, interviews, substacks, took courses, listened to podcasts by editors and agents, all about the publishing industry.
Let’s say you’re a traditionally published commercial author. Your publisher expects you to write 1, or even 2 books per year, on deadline. While the publisher will help with marketing, you don’t know how much, and you’re expected to contribute. For me, the hardest part would be public relations. Writers do book tours, interviews, podcasts, conferences, conventions, and all kinds of public appearances. I’m afraid of public speaking. I don’t enjoy traveling for brief trips, spending all my time in airports, airplanes, and hotel rooms, like George Clooney in Up in the Air. This isn’t the life I want.
It’s even worse for self-published writers. The burden is entirely on you, hiring an editorial team, book covers, distribution, foreign agents (if you are so lucky), and lots of time spent on marketing.
It’s difficult to overstate how much effort goes into selling a book. The reality is publishing is a buyer’s market and there are already enough books out there to last us many lifetimes. To get a publishing house to buy your book, or a consumer, you need to use marketing to cut through the noise. Tim Ferris says if you want to write a book, expect to work on it full-time for a year, spending at least 30% of that time on marketing. In self-publishing,
We romanticize the outcome of writing. When I imagine writing, the image which comes to mind is Ernest Hemingway sitting in a cafe in Paris, thoughtfully smoking a pipe, as he watches pedestrians walk by. Fan communities idolize authors, treating them like gods, paying sizable sums of money for their autographs.
If you watch Brandon Sanderon’s weekly updates on his writing, you might get the wrong impression. When he says he wrote 20,000 words that week. It doesn’t mean 20,000 words that are ready to be published. It’s more like 20,000 words are now ready for the next phase of the editorial process, to be reviewed by his developmental editor, beta readers, copy editor, or whatever. Naively, it may seem that writing a 100,000 word book is simply writing 10,000 words a week for 10 weeks. The reality is there is a ton of revision which happens, as he’s writing, and afterwards.
How to Treat Your Novel as a Wonder Project
I’ve taken many continuing education creative writing classes. There’s always at least a few people who say “this is my first novel and I need it to be published.” The instructors do their best to be optimistic and offer their advice. They’re afraid to offer a reality check because writing classes are supposed to be aspirational, giving students permission to let writing into their busy lives.
What these instructors wish to say is that getting published takes a long time. If you come in with this attitude of do or die on your first attempt, then you’re not gonna make it in the long run. Because you probably won’t sell your first novel. Which is OK, because your first novel won’t be very good.
Forget about publishing. Focus on the process. Ask people to read what you wrote and if you get feedback that it’s fantastic and worthy of publication, then consider it. Everything before that is premature.
A better heuristic is to ask yourself “Am I experiencing wonder?” It’s a much more important question than “is this good enough?” because it won’t ever be good enough. How could our projects live up to our expectations? The goal is to capture in portraiture the complexity and emotion of life. Yet, written language itself is a lossy form of compression, incapable of capturing the depth of emotions as we experience them.
Ask yourself where is the wonder in your current project? How can you build your process around harnessing it? Allow yourself to work at a natural pace, inhabiting your characters, getting absorbed into the sensory landscape of your scenes. Keep a writing journal and write about your story, your process, interview your characters.
What This Means for Your Daily Writing Practice
The proper reward of writing is personal development. I truly believe writing is good for you. Writing has improved my life by creating a forcing function to define my values, my goals, to slow down, and get out of my comfort zone. Focus on what you can control: keep showing up. The biggest barrier to writing is doubt. (Is there interest in me doing a post on doubt?)
Measure your success by your emotional state after you’ve finished writing for the day. Do you feel curious, engaged, and interested in continuing? The goal is to write for life. Not to get a book deal. I can do a post on it, but book writing is statistically not a good way to make money. It’s a winner-take-all market where the large majority of sales go to the books in the top 1 or 2 place spot on the bestseller list. If you calculate the pay-per-hour on the average advance, you’re basically working for cents on the hour. Of course, it’s possible to make a living. In reality, it won’t be for everyone. It takes an incredible amount of time and dedication to break through. Most people who’re interested in writing already have careers, families, and hobbies.
Which is why busy modern day knowledge workers need a separate mental framework for writing compared to professional writers. Write in a way that gives you energy. Do what makes you want to keep going. Find the wonder.
Success is a poor motivator. While wonder is much better. Brandon Sanderson has a beautiful essay about how giving readers a sense of belonging is a powerful motivator for his writing. Find what resonates for you and pursue it with single-minded devotion.
Let’s be honest, you never cared about the book deal, anyway. You’re writing because you love to read books. You want to be part of this 5,000 year tradition of telling stories to give people the hope and courage to live their lives. Here’s an invitation to treat your novel to engineer wonder into your life today.
A successful writing career is one you can sustain for a lifetime. It can be a substantial source of strength, allowing you to live a life true to your values.
And who knows? Maybe what you’ve written will help others, will be a small part of the solution. You don’t even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
- Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird