How many novels until you get a good one?

I'd like to piggyback on Aggy's comment about Brandon Sanderson.

He sold his thirteenth novel. (Neat fact, btw, I didn't know that.)

But there's no reason he (or you or I) couldn't use that experience to go back and revise earlier novels, now that he'd found his footing. Some novels are trunked and should remain that way. But some are just waiting (I hope) for the writer to develop the skills to make them sing.

So just because you write and and trunk it, doesn't mean that's its ultimate fate. At least, I'm hoping that's the case, although it certainly can't hurt to wrote with an eye to what sells.

Brutal Mustang said:

Baffles me too. How can you want to write if you don't love books?

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The only guess I have are people who come to certain SF and F franchises through the literary back door of movies or tV--people who saw the Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Game of Throne, or LoTR movies/TV before they read the books, but now they want to write something just like that?

Or maybe via video games. They want to write stuff that's like their favorite games, but not *just* fan fiction.

Nothing wrong with all that, of course, but it does make it more of a challenge if one hasn't been reading all along, and if one isn't fairly well read in the genre they're trying to enter.

Roxxsmom said:

The only guess I have are people who come to certain SF and F franchises through the literary back door of movies or tV--people who saw the Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Game of Throne, or LoTR movies/TV before they read the books, but now they want to write something just like that?

Or maybe via video games. They want to write stuff that's like their favorite games, but not *just* fan fiction.

Nothing wrong with all that, of course, but it does make it more of a challenge if one hasn't been reading all along, and if one isn't fairly well read in the genre they're trying to enter.

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Yep. Made that mistake when I was younger. Hated reading, but wanted to write. As a result, my work was terrible (took me several years to realize it). Forced myself to start reading and now I can't imagine life without my books.

I agree with the folk who talked about critique and not writing in a vacuum. I definitely believe in raw talent, but even the most talented rawest writer needs time and work to improve - we're all constantly improving. I don't believe there's a set number of pieces/wordage you need to hit before you 'get a good one'. I think there's a point where a writer feels 'publishable' and you'll get there faster if you surround yourself with a good critiquing network of like minds and use that advice to improve your work. I also think you have to write and read, absorb and create ideas, a ton before that happens.

My two cents? Don't ask yourself that sort of question, for that way lies despair.

I poured my heart and soul into my book and was really enthusiastic until I started asking questions like that. I gave up on my little project before I sent out my first query and received my first rejection. I've spent so much time addling my brain with this sort of question that now I'm not only convinced nothing I ever write will be publishable, but that I lack the talent in general. The result? A sad shell of a writer serializing his work for free and praying to all that is holy that just a few people will read and enjoy it.

Asking yourself how much you need to write to be good is a losing proposition, all the way around. The answers you come back with will always be "more than I have now" and "way too much for me to do."

Wow, that's a real "piece of string" question. I ended up selling the forth novel I *finished*, but I dread to think how many others I've started and abandoned at various stages over the last 20-odd years.

I'm afraid you're not going to get an exact answer to this question. The discussion in general makes me think of a conversation in the Jules Feiffer children's book The Man in the Ceiling. I wish I could give the exact quote, but I'm afraid I couldn't track it down and I don't have a copy of the book, so you'll have to deal with my paraphrase.

The kid, Jimmy, who wants to be an artist, is talking with his uncle about how he can't draw hands. His uncle, who write musicals, talks about how he can't write a love song.

Jimmy says but you did write a love song and starts singing the latest song from his musical. His uncle talks about how it took him twelve years to write a decent love song, how he had tried and tried for years to come up with a decent love song.

He ends the conversation by saying, "Some composers sit down at the piano for three minutes and within those minutes, they have a love song. There's is a three minute love song. But mine was a twelve year love song."

That's pretty much true of writing. Nearly every writer who ever turned out to be worth reading has a drawer full of manuscripts that didn't take flight. Some writers only have two failed manuscripts, but some have two hundred.

It takes a while to find your writing legs, to find the one story idea that won't let you go no matter how bad your feeling of burn-out may be. But you'll know it when you find it.

I wrote three trunk novels and a collection of short stories, before selfpublishing the fourth.

I got picked up by a publisher by my fifth novel and will have my 10th through 12th titles out this summer.

The first one the publisher picked up has been the best selling one yet, so ... eigth?

But it's not really any use to aim for a number.

I felt despair when I realized my very first manuscript probably would not sell. I just couldn't fanthom to go through that process again without any payoff.

But that is how it played out.

WormHeart

Welcome back, wormheart.

My first novel was published, but it took over 20 years, lots of rejections and a number of rewrites.

I'm writing the second one now, so hopefully it won't take as long...

I got my writing foundations as a teenager writing fan fiction, but a lot of those works were novel length. In terms of actual manuscripts, though, I trunked two manuscripts before a publisher picked up my third!

BethS said:

Nonsense. From what I've seen, you have incredible talent. It's shocking to me that no agent has yet recognized that.

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Seconding this. Absolutely totally seconding this. M'kay Blacbird?

gettingby said:

I have heard that for many their first novel isn't published. Maybe their second isn't either. So, how may novels do you have to write before you get a good one?

My first novel (and only) wasn't too bad, but it wasn't going to get published. Now, that novel is somewhere in a drawer or box, but I have no desire to do anything with it. My second attempt started to sound stupid. I thought my time would be better spent on other things than writing another bad novel. My latest attempt... I'm not sure about yet.

My primary focus is in writing shorter pieces. I like the feeling of finishing things. And if something doesn't come out as great as I had hoped, it is a lot easier to revise or trash it. I know my short-story writing has greatly improved. I attribute that to the volume of works I have produced. I almost always have a short story in the works, and I always, with a few small exceptions, finish shorts. I can clearly see now that it took writing a few bad stories to be able to write the good ones. Is the same thing true for novels? I just can't imagine putting a year or more of my writing time into something that might suck in the end.

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It depends on what you mean by good.

My first novel is good in terms of world-building, plot and characters but absolutely dreadful because I knew next to nothing about the nuts-and-bolts level of fiction writing.

It's riddled with as-you-know-Bob-dialogue, info-dumps and POV shifts and it took putting it up in SYW to find that out.

On the other hand, the characters and world are too good to waste so I'll rewrite it when the time comes and it'll be part four of a series.

How many? n+1, where n = 0 or greater.

It's lucky we don't need to multiply that by the square root of minus one times v2 / c2........or stuff to that effect.

I thought I'd better keep it simple. Although I know at least one person who'd be stumped by that.

Simplicity is good.

In fact, I propose a toast. To simplicity!

dondomat said:

Welcome back, wormheart.

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Thanks

Things got so busy around here that I didn't even have time to procrastinate on the forums.

Now I'm back.

WormHeart

And how much of our life have we already spent writing? for what? for what? for what? In my case, because there's nothing i love so much. Even though public rewards are sparse.

Recently I read my first novel that I had wrote at the age of 17. And it turned to be HORRIBLE.
But when I wrote this I thought it was brilliant.

I don't think there's an answer to your question.
It's completely individually.
To me it took about 5 bad novels to got a good one.

Current thought is that it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, playing an instrument, painting, writing...