Why do novelists write

There is just something irresistible about seeing a writer exalted, mocked, punished, perplexed, thwarted, reviled and avenged on the page.

Still, irresistible or no, when I started writing my first novel, What Sammy Knew , I had no idea that its hero was going to be a writer. Young, yes—I knew, going in, that Sammy Stein had to be a high school senior. Clueless, ambitious, self-obsessed, a late bloomer, hopelessly romantic, laughably gullible, wildly insecure: Sammy shambled onto the page with all of these qualities.

Too skinny to be a jock. Too goofy to be popular. A witness to tumultuous times yet blind to the plots and counterplots swirling around him in New York City in A couple of chapters in, I saw where all this was going: What else could Sammy be but a budding author?

After that, Sammy started calling the shots. He never went anywhere without his black marble-covered notebook. He kept a diary—secret and hidden, of course. He was editor of his high school newspaper.

Writer with a vengeance! Any author with an established public presence is a boon to publishing houses. Instead of having to start with nothing, you have provided them with an established professional platform and an already growing audience.

The novel and the short story: two opposing creative creatures that share more in common than most realise. Unfortunately, the short story is often disregarded by novelists as pointless, but instead it should be embraced, and regularly.

Narrative tools, skills, awareness, experiences and authorial identity are all transferable from short- to long-form fiction and can really maximise the potential of any novel. Short story writing provides novelists with a multitude of opportunities for creative and professional development, so why not try one today?

Maggie Doonan is an emerging author of fiction and non-fiction. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts: Creative and Professional Writing with distinction and several publications online and in print. For more on Maggie, check out her Facebook page here. Fantasy novels are well-known for including maps, more so It can be hard to sit down and start writing. Or maybe Skip to content The ability to write a short story, and write it well, is invaluable to any author.

Writing short stories… Develops creative and critical skills. Builds portfolios. Provides the opportunity to expand experiences with submissions, editors and professional expectations. Furthers your understanding of genres and potential readerships. In a short story, you have none of this. In a short story, every word matters. If you want to improve as a novelist, you should definitely delve into the art of the short story.

Writing short fiction can help you learn how to start your story in exactly the right place. Image via Pexels Creating round characters Working within a restricted word count forces your character descriptions to evolve.

Learning to trim the fat This is by far the ultimate skill to be gained from regular short story writing: the ability to cut the fat. Do you really need it, though? Image via Negative Space 2. Short stories build portfolios A writing portfolio is a collection of polished, published work that a writer uses as something of a resume when submitting new work, or applying for a permanent or freelance writing position.

Write short stories and try to get published regularly: your portfolio will shine. Short stories can really help expand your writing portfolio. Image via Skitterphoto 3. Short stories help you expand your experiences A writer can never have enough experience working within the industry.

Submissions Every publication has its own submission guidelines and as a submitting author, you are expected to find and follow these guidelines. Orwell might have summed it up best. In his essay , he listed what he believed to be the four great motives for writing :. Sheer egoism. To be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups in childhood, etc.

Aesthetic enthusiasm. To take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Historical impulse. The desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

Political purposes. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. While every author seemed to have a slightly different motive for writing, they all appear compelled to tell us stories, a burning desire to get something out and share it with the world.

Whether you are an avid reader or a writer Why We Write is an insightful work which allows you the chance to visit the minds of some of the most successful authors of our time. Also check out our post on the extremely prolific writer Isaac Asimov and maybe improve your professional writing by taking the advice of Steven Pinker.

Read Next. Thinking , Writing Reading Time: 5 minutes. One of the most well-known is from George Orwell, who eloquently answered the question in in an essay called Why I Write : From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. At that little blue Victorian house?

Over at the railroad bridge, actually. Suddenly, Stan has made a love story. To his wife. To Linda. What did Stan the artist just do? Well, first, surveying his little domain, he noticed which way his hobo was looking.

Then he chose to change that little universe, by turning the plastic woman. An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Artists know this. How, then, to proceed? Accept the result without whining. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose rinse, lather, repeat , through sometimes hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments.

The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this? Revising by the method described is a form of increasing the ambient intelligence of a piece of writing. This, in turn, communicates a sense of respect for your reader. As text is revised, it becomes more specific and embodied in the particular.

It becomes more sane. It becomes less hyperbolic, sentimental, and misleading.