| GUEST COLUMN |
Decision Fatigue, Perfectionism, and The Land Mines of Fiction Writing by Connor Judson Garrett
Fiction writing is harder than it may appear. In theory, the freedom to invent from scratch should give fiction writers flexibility and an all-around more fluid writing experience. In practice, it doesn’t always work out like that. There’s a reason so few authors have managed to sustain large scale fictional universes like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, and George R.R. Martin (who lost steam in his series, by the way). Fiction writing is a field covered in landmines; hidden bombs ready to blow a good idea to bits. In fact, that’s part of the reason why so many half-finished novels never mature to their final, publishable form. What are these “landmines” and how can a writer detect and work around them? The first landmine is the author themselves. Only bad writers believe that every drop of ink they put on a page is gold. Good writers question themselves; their characters; their plot; and every decision they make. More specifically, this landmine is perfectionism and the decision fatigue that develops as a result of it. Good fiction writers want to make sure the story is as close to perfect as it can be. While perfection is an unattainable and somewhat subjective goal, a degree of objectivity still exists in the arts. We can generally agree on what is good versus bad writing. A writer is aware of this intuitive criteria and tries to write their perfect manuscript. This obstacle is greater in fiction than nonfiction because of the sheer number of choices the author has to make. For example, in nonfiction, the characters, the plot, 114 | UncagedBooks.com
and the dialogue occurred in real life. While that’s a fairly obvious statement, what it also means is that a nonfiction author is a curator instead of being an inventor. The nonfiction writer can focus on the lyricism of their prose and the arrangement of the events as opposed to getting bogged down with doubt about the plot, the setting, and all the other from-scratch fictional story ingredients. The more choices the author has to make, the more room they have to doubt themselves and their decisions. A massive amount of the mental exhaustion in fiction writing stems from self-doubt. The inner-critic is necessary. You can’t and shouldn’t try to kill it off, but how can you quiet it down long enough to finish that first draft? A few keys to avoiding this landmine are outlining and developing your own writing process. Fiction writing, especially when it comes to novels and other long-form, is an emotional and mental marathon. That means, the author has to have a roadmap to maintain momentum in spite of the wrenches life may throw at them. After all, nobody has the fortune of creating in a vacuum. Personally, as an author with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), my process and outlining system is designed to compensate for certain challenges that I face. I outline scene-by-scene and then write pages and pages of notes and research in order to get rid of the sensation of having missed crucial details. Create a writing process that matches your life and your personality. For instance, if you tend to lose focus easily, you should probably aggressively write your first draft. Outlining Spellbound Under The Spanish Moss: A Southern Tale of Magic took my father and I several months, but the actual writing took us three weeks to complete. In my case, I have a strict rule that I do not edit or revise before the first draft is finished.
