Repairing Your Novel

an article on writing by author Toni Blake

I was sitting outside Home Depot today waiting for my husband to buy new blinds for our bedroom and watching all the people come out with their bags and boxes and cart loads of home improvement materials. I thought about how handy and enterprising Home Depot customers are and was reminded of the workshop my father had when I was growing up. We didn’t have much money and when something in our house broke, the last thing we did was go buy a new one. There was little my father couldn’t fix or put back together or construct just from the many and varied resources in his workshop.

I mention all this because I think writing can be a lot like home repair. We love our stories and our novels when they’re shiny and new, when all the parts are working together like they’re supposed to. But it’s easy not to love them so much when we find something seriously wrong that’s going to take a lot of work to fix. Discover a serious problem and you might find yourself thinking - the whole thing probably stinks, it can’t be fixed, no one’s going to want to publish it anyway, so why bother?

At this point you may be deciding that it would just be easier to start on something new, something fresh - maybe this one will turn out right. But think back to all those Home Depot patrons. Whatever it is they’re fixing probably has a solid foundation. Maybe just one part needs to be replaced or maybe all the parts need to be reworked a little, but either way, you don’t see them scrapping the whole project just because it would be easier that way.

Think of your novel in these same terms. If you loved your story enough to write it, surely you love it enough to repair its problems. And no, this is not easy, but it’s also not impossible. Many times I have left my critique group, in deep despair, thinking: this is it - they’ve finally found the problem so major and severe that it can’t be fixed. But I’ve yet to give up on one of these problems, and I’ve yet to find one that couldn’t be repaired. I should also add that finding out you’ve got what it takes to correct a serious problem can be as satisfying as creating the work in the first place.

If you toss your novel aside at the first sign of trouble, you’ll never learn the art of repair. This is key to writing success because no matter how pumped and inspired you feel when you sit down at the keyboard, it’s never going to come out completely right on the first try and it might even come out extremely wrong. This is where joy and inspiration meet hard work and sweat. To produce a solid piece of work, these ingredients must mesh - without that mix, you’ll never create a story that’s the best it can be.

And as for the tools you need to fix your story, don’t go to Home Depot because they won’t have them there. You might need to go to the bookstore or the library, or you might need to brainstorm with a friend and/or critique partner. But the main tools you’ll need will come from inside you. Only you know your story and your characters, and in the end, only you are capable of fixing their weak points, working out their conflict, and solving their problems.

So the next time you stroll into a hardware store, notice the people shopping there and think about their willingness to revive something they could just as easily have thrown away. Then the next time you’re experiencing major stress over problems in your novel, be inspired by their resourcefulness.