My education as a writer

Back in 2003, I was 24 years old and I had a drawer full of unfinished or downright failed novels.

Twenty years, five published novels, a short story collection, and a handful of awards later, it might be instructive to look back and share with you what I’ve learned.

In 2003, I knew how to write a good sentence (in Dutch!). What I didn’t know was how to construct a captivating story.

Then three significant things happened in quick succession.

1.

A well-known Dutch author, A.F.Th. van der Heijden, published the first part of a novel series that was based on the Oedipus tragedies of Sophocles. And after reading Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I discovered in interviews about the book that Rushdie considered it a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth.

So that was possible too, I realized.

Taking a classical story and giving it a modern twist.

2.

During that same period, I saw an impressive, heartbreaking performance of Shakespeare's Othello, performed by a theater company that nowadays goes by the name International Theatre Amsterdam.

I was so taken by that performance that I felt the need to do something with it.

These two elements clicked together: I decided to use Othello as the foundation for a contemporary story that would take place in a world that I knew well: the circuit of up-and-coming rock bands.

(I was myself a - not too great - singer and guitarist in such a band.)

3.

The third element was that my then-girlfriend stayed in Florida for a few months for her studies. I went to visit her for a month.

Each day, as she headed to the lab, I would ride along and settle in the campus library. That's where I wrote the first draft of my Othello novel.

My regular table in the library happened to be located next to the Literature and Literary Criticism section. Whenever I took a break from writing, I’d stroll along the bookshelves and occasionally pick up a title to browse through.

That way, I discovered Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov.

I read a collection of Paris Review interviews.

I came across a collection of letters by Flaubert and found solace in the five-year-long saga of despair that was the writing process of Madame Bovary.

There, in the library of Florida Atlantic University, my education as a writer began.

Back in Amsterdam, I worked on my Othello novel practically every day for another three years.

I read everything I could get my hands on about creative writing and literary analysis. I devoured diaries of writers, read and listened to interviews with writers, and studied biographies.

And guess what, folks: after three years, I had learned so much that I had to make a harsh judgment on my manuscript. I would have to start all over again, from scratch, to salvage anything from it.

The thought of possibly investing another three years into it was quite disheartening.

I was saved by a powerful idea for a whole new novel. And yes, that would eventually — four years later — become my debut novel.

My years of study, which began in Florida, finally paid off.

Takeaways:

• You can use classic texts as a foundation for your own fiction, if only to discover and study how timeless stories are structured.
• Write every day. Be relentless: writing takes time, a lot of time.
• Read every day: fiction by other writers, but also secondary sources like interviews, diaries, letters, literary analyses, books on creative writing.
• Don't give up too easily, but be honest with yourself if a writing project is truly failing.

That's it!

I hope you found this helpful.

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By the way, I also write a weekly newsletter in which I unravel the secrets of fiction: https://thesecretsoffiction.substack.com