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So a strange and unforeseen side effect of lockdown seems to be that a heated discussion has broken out about whether lockdown is a good opportunity to write a novel. How tremendous that everyone is so concerned about the future of fiction! I do, of course, have thoughts.
Firstly I would say that there is actually no genuinely opportune time to write a novel. Conditions will never be perfect. You can’t control the world around you. The best time is therefore whenever you feel moved to write one.
The moment you feel moved to write a novel, and I say this from experience, all sorts of people will suddenly have opinions about whether you should write one at all, and, if you do, what sort of novel it should be.
These people tend to divide into people who claim to have your best interests at heart and proud but very boring cynics who say things like “the last thing the world needs another novel”.
Just to be clear: a huge aspect of the job of being a novelist is to ignore every single one of these people. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
But it’s interesting to consider where these people might be coming from and how internalising their perspective can be a major obstacle in writing what you want.
Far too many people, all of whom should know better, have completely and unthinkingly internalised a market position when it comes to the writing of fiction. If you’re going to write a novel, they say, it must be “good”.
By “good”, they obviously mean “something I would like”. But they also mean: something that will sell, something that will be popular. Otherwise, they will tell you, it’s not “worth it.”
The problem with this is that it entirely ignores the most important role art plays in our lives. For artists, art is what enables them to process the world and their feelings. Art is a safe place to put what you’re experiencing. Art is a discipline of self exploration.
So all art is “worth it.” If you have something to express that you feel needs to take the form of a novel, then best to explore that, for yourself. You can worry about whether some tosspot on twitter thinks it’s “good” later.
So in that sense of course lockdown is a good time to write that novel you’ve been thinking about. You are worried, you are isolated, you have time on your hands you never expected to have to fill. You need an activity that lends meaning and purpose to your days.
Maybe you’ll love writing a novel. Maybe you’ll start writing that novel you’ve always wanted to write and find that, actually, you hate writing novels, and you never want to do it again. Both of those things are fine.
But I also want to say this: it’s a difficult thing to talk about but the novel has an intimate relationship with death.
If you work on a novel for a few years, death comes into your mind in strange ways. Novels are often a response to the feeling that death is creeping closer. They feel like a way of controlling time and life.
All novels, in one way or another, channel, confront, evade and court death.
So yes, a moment in all of our lives when we on one level have too much time on our hands and on another level are suddenly worried we might not have enough time is a very novelistic moment.
As is a moment when, quite suddenly, we are reminded of life’s complexity, of the quite terrifying extent of our interconnectedness and interdependency. And of course the fragility of all our systems.
Every novel is a system that can be set against the collapse of other systems. Every novel is both a pausing and an infinite unfolding of time.
Every novel is both an acceptance of death in that we want something to outlive us, and a mad act of invincibility in that we convince ourselves we have enough years to complete it.
So in that sense: the best time to write a novel is always right now. Really, that’s the *only* time to write a novel.
Anyone telling you to wait a while is just foisting their fear and delusion on you and you should ignore them.
