You Want to Write a Novel

Are intrigued by the latest Nobel laureates or are celebrating National Poetry Month

Hi friends,

I hope you had a great weekend! I visited some friends in Philly and attended the Fur Ball, a fundraiser for Morris Animal Refuge. So I could focus on catching up with my friends, novelist Eman Quotah kindly agreed to sub for me this week. She has three great recommendations for you.

Eman is the author of the novel Bride of the Sea. She grew up in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Toast, The Establishment, Book Riot, Literary Hub, Electric Literature and other publications. She lives with her family near Washington, D.C. Eman is also a former colleague and a friend.

I’ll be back next week with recommendations and a Q&A featuring Liz Scheier, author of the memoir Never Simple.

And now what to read if…

You’re a First-Time Novelist

Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell

Novel-writing — the process of it, how to get it done — is a mystery even to many of us who’ve written and published novels. How did I write my book? I can barely remember. Lots of people (maybe you!) want to write novels, and many dive in with nothing guiding them beyond a love of reading and a desire to tell a story. Even novelists with creative writing degrees (like me) tend to get more formal training in writing short stories, not long-form fiction. All of us muddle along, figuring out our writerly processes as we go.

It's hard, time-consuming, frustrating work. That’s why there are lots of unfinished manuscripts in the world. And why Matt Bell’s brand-new guide, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts, is such a godsend.

Bell divides the novel-writing process into three stages: The “generative” draft, narrative revision and polishing revision. First, write to produce inspiration, using techniques such as writing “islands” of the stuff you know is going to happen and later bridging these sections together. Next, outline the first draft to find the second. Finally, tweak and polish the writing, until the manuscript feels done.

Bell’s novels include Appleseed and In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods. He’s also a writing teacher, the author of a newsletter for writers and a generous member of #writingTwitter. He’s filled this book with positive encouragement, practical tips and useful exercises. His approach is not the only way to start and finish writing a novel (there really are a million and one), and he admits as much. But he makes novel-writing seem possible, and that’s a gift for anyone facing the blank page.

Bonus rec: Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal is a must-read for any writer who wants to be published and has finished, or is close to finishing, a first manuscript.

You’re Craving a Modern Classic

Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah

When the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded each year, I’m excited to find out who won. Then I’m overwhelmed because, of course, each of these literary lions has a whole oeuvre from which to choose. Where to start? I never know.

Earlier this year the virtual book club Radical Books Collective solved my yearly dilemma when they announced their February virtual meeting would feature the novel Gravel Heart by 2021 laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. Even better: Gurnah had agreed to visit the book club session. Meet a Nobel laureate, even if over Zoom? Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

With my book choice made for me, I dove into Gravel Heart, the coming-of-age story of Salim, a boy from Zanzibar whose family is torn apart by 1970s politics and corruption. In his teens, Salim moves to London to live with his uncle and continue his education, but his life in England does not go as planned, and his distance from his family is compounded by shame.

Gravel Heart is a contemplative, melancholy book with immersive prose, like this description of Salim’s childhood memories of his father:

… I thought I could remember sitting in the sun beside my father on the doorstep of our house while he held a stick of pink candy floss into which I was about to sink my face. That was a memory which came to me as an arrested instant without conclusion, a moment without preamble or direction. How could I have invented that? I just was not sure if it had really happened.

Tanzanian-born Gurnah also wrote Paradise, By the Sea and other novels. And, I can report he was a charming and self-effacing book club guest.

You Want to Observe National Poetry Month

Customs by Solmaz Sharif

I think poetry is for reading year-round; for me, imbibing poems between novels is like having a spoonful of cool sorbet between courses of a rich meal. But if you don’t regularly read poetry, National Poetry Month in April is a perfect time to dip your toe into verse. And there’s so much great contemporary poetry to choose from! I’ll point you to the collection I most looked forward to this year, Solmaz Sharif’s Customs.

Sharif’s first collection, Look, interrogated and appropriated the language of the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms to critique the casualness with which war talk camouflages violence and erases victims. So, I knew she would lean into the multiple meanings of her follow-up collection’s title: the conventions of societies, the officialdom of the borders that let us in or keep us out. Sharif turns language on its head while also showing how topsy-turvy language is in the first place. Words can’t be trusted, and neither can the policing of boundaries.

Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Sharif writes viscerally and urgently about the alienation of diaspora. She uses straightforward language and then complicates it. She cracks open syntax and spits in the eye of poetic custom. Every word, line break, poetic image, bit of white space and even punctuation mark in Customs illustrates her themes.

If you’re fed up with war and division, as I am, Customs may be the primal scream you need.

Bonus Recs for the Young at Heart

I asked my kids to each recommend a book, and here’s what they came up with:

“If you want a mash-up of Star Trek and Harry Potter, read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.”—N, age 14

“If you don’t mind a sad story, read Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White.”—J, age 10

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Thanks again to Eman — and her kids (!) — for their recommendations. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter and buy Bride of the Sea.

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What to Read If is a free weekly book recommendation newsletter. Need a rec? Want to gush about a book? Reply to this email, leave a comment or find me on Twitter @elizabethheld.

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