“I feel intimidated by, or unworthy of, writing a novel. Can you help me?”

A new fall WRITING TIPS series, from an award-winning, working novelist

This fall I’m starting a NEW SERIES of writing prompts and advice to get you writing in these cosy colder months. Each post will answer a real question I’ve been asked recently, by a real person, about writing. Todays’ question is: “I feel intimidated by, or unworthy of, writing a novel. Can you help me?” This question was submitted by an amazing comedian and screenwriter I know, who wants to work on their first novel. Anyone can ask a question—I have a few to answer already, but I’ll do my best to answer yours—feel free to comment on any paid or unpaid post with your question. I’ll see it. If you’d like to read my answers, sign up for a paid subscription here. Minimum sub is for one month at $5, and all are welcome!

Let’s get on to answering this interesting and, indeed, very worthy question. I’ve left the first half of my answer free to read to all subscribers, so you can get the gist of what my advice might be like before you sign up for a paid subscription.

Love, AJ xo

I’ve always thought that writing is as much an emotional act as it is a literary one.

Stories have heart. They move us. They speak to us. They consider wisely and perceptively aspects of our humanity we find painful and confusing.

Which is to say, writers have heart and move us and speak to us. We demand of them wisdom, perception, and understanding, either buried within us or that we do not yet have.

A novel also requires an authorial voice consistent and convincing enough to lead the reader through 200+ pages of narrative, none of it real.

The Reader has to trust You, The Writer. A novel, for the duration of its reading, is a contract of trust. If You, The Writer, don’t trust yourself, then your confusion, your lack of clarity, your inability to make decisions is clear on the page. The book takes detours from the theme to talk about things unrelated to the theme. The characters perform their parts without clear motivation. The conclusion appears shoved into the story, unrelated to the plot heretofore. We don’t quite know what is happening. The fourth wall is broken and it becomes evident to the reader that this is fiction—because reality is a solid thing you can touch.

Writing requires emotional clarity. Emotional clarity requires that we trust our feelings and instincts (those things which emit from our selves). Trusting our selves requires self-worth. We have to believe our selves are worth listening to. That we aren’t stupid. Or silly. Or pathetic losers. Or overreacting. Or being too sensitive. That we aren’t “less well-informed” or “uneducated” or “too young” or “from the sticks” or “not from the right background to be a writer”, or if we are, that that doesn’t make us useless people with pointless opinions.

See where I’m going with this yet? Let’s continue. Or, as my authorial voice might say, “come along, follow me, this way” ~

I read recently that when human beings write about their own trauma, their penmanship appears to belong to someone entirely different. When we write from our trauma or our shame or our feeling that we are somehow less than worthy, our writing is totally different.

Thank you, to the person who asked me for advice in this regard. This is a working writer from the field of comedy, who has written stand up and scripts (and no, it’s not Rosie Wilby, another excellent comedian whose prose writing I do edit). This working writer is new to prose, and intimidated by the idea of working without a partner, like a director or producer, to provide feedback. They also asked me about worthiness.

“I’m struggling to transition back into a writing habit,” they said. “What I find is that I’m intimidated by it. I know the pain I’m going to have to go through, and I feel like that’s harder with solo writing. I’m afraid of saying what I want to badly and being misinterpreted. I actually have a lot more questions around the topic of being worthy of writing, which is only a problem I’ve recently found coming up for me.”

I’ve distilled this down into the title of this piece: “I feel intimidated by, or unworthy of, writing a novel. Can you help me?”

Firstly, my bank account will absolutely kick me if I don’t mention that you don’t have to write prose alone. I’ve worked as an editor for the last five years with clients writing their first novels, second novels, memoirs, and non-fiction proposals. What I do, I’ll broadly refer to as book development. Most of the time, people come to me in the early stages of writing. I provide the typical “headline notes” on theme, character, style, the writing itself. When the book is much further on, I also do line edits and proof reading. But the development part is asking questions like, what do you really want to tell the reader with this work? Where does that message come from in your own life? How might that knowledge impact the work as you write? We also dig further into questions you might be on the cusp of asking, that worry round the edges of what is currently there and call us closer. What do you mean when you refer to the title character in this way? Why is this aside in here? Does this small part need expanding? Is this thing you’re hesitating to say actually very important to you?

My job as an editor and mentor is to guide writers to create the work THEY want to make, to say what they want to say, and to do so in their own voice, confident because I’ve helped them trust themselves and clear because we might have freed it from excess paragraphs, self-conscious diversions, or worried, wordy padding.

Sometimes the message is clear—but hidden under “too much” because the writer is worried their truth and their words are not enough. Sometimes the message isn’t yet on the page, because the writer doesn’t believe in their truth and words enough to put them down on paper (or screen).

But it’s all about trust. Helping you to trust yourself enough that you don’t need to make it fancy, add some needless verbosity, get out your thesaurus to impress those publishers you worry about impressing. Helping you to trust yourself enough that you can boldly write how you feel, because how you feel is actually important. Because maybe it’s how a lot of people feel.

My practice is trauma- and intersectionality-informed, and by that I mean that I see people as having had individual and often very different life stories, and that myself, many of my clients, and the people I’ve worked with through my own writing career, have experienced various traumas, and I take into consideration how their experiences and how they see themselves might impact their work.

But, maybe you can’t afford an editor. That’s okay. I don’t have an editor and I wrote all of my books without one, until I acquired editors through their sales to publishers. You can write a book without help, and I’m going to give you some tools here to support you in doing so.

Change to a paid subscription to read the rest of this post ~ and additional posts every Thursday answering questions from Instagram followers and Substack readers, about writing. I had three novels published internationally by the time I was 30; my earlier books by Simon & Schuster, my latest by Picador. Writing? Let me help:

The first thing I want you to know ~ and you might have noticed me trying to make you understand this ~ is that it’s okay to feel this way.

To carry several differentiated arcs, thematic, character, and plot, through a maze of roughly 100,000 words (and this maze, also the story’s scaffolding), to do this elegantly, to create thrilling sentences as well as interesting scenes and recognisably human characters, is a talent, a skill; the product of work, experience, and gift. It’s understandable that it might seem daunting to anyone.

You are safe ~ here, with me, and within the writing community, because many of us struggle with these feelings. It is a perfectly natural part of the writing process and do you know what it means? You are writing! You are beginning…

A little exercise: Try to communicate this safety to your nervous system, by gently patting your chest or thighs, by naming aloud the places in you where you feel tension, or by checking in with your inner child and reminding them you, the adult, is here, and so am I. We got them. We got this. Do they have something to say? Can they tell you why they are scared or low? Listen to them. Especially if you’re finding what I’m telling you to do dorky right now ~ you need this the most. Take your inner child seriously. Take your self seriously. The child you once were is a beautiful person, deserving of your love, time, and attention. It is not fair to them to ignore them or minimise their needs.

Let me tell you and your inner child something. The first time you do anything, particularly something meaningful to you, it’s typical to be intimidated. My Malaysian auntie runs a Cantonese takeaway. Years ago, I was working there, training a new staff member, a teenager, still in school. When we had a new customer, she hung back. “It gives me anxiety,” she said. Her nervous system was activated by the new challenge. I explained to her that, because this was her first job, it was typical to feel that way, but what was making her anxious today would, in three weeks, feel like nothing at all. I explained that everything in her life would be like that—every challenge would make her sink further into her own confidence and ease, and she would become a larger person who knew she could count on herself. For the rest of her life, it would still conjure anxiety to start new things—but less so than this time, because she would carry within her the experience of meeting past challenges. Within a month, she was managing her shift like a pro.

So, feeling nervous is part of the act of doing something that makes you grow. It’s not only an indication that you are, in fact, doing the emotional work of writing, but that you should be proud of yourself for tackling something that makes you feel challenged.

That’s something I wanted you to know. Now let’s figure out what’s blocking you.

In my editing and writing practice, I’ve worked with people with traumas of all kinds.

I’d like to invite you not to make judgements about the relative “size” of peoples’ traumas. Traumas change the way we are and elicit strong emotions, and that definition can cover things that aren’t violent or terrifying or otherwise obvious.

When I’m talking about trauma, I’m also talking about intersectionality. I’m talking about all the ways in which our identities and experiences intersect to affect how worthy we feel of doing the work we want to do. How does the trauma of living constantly before the male gaze affect women’s ability to script female characters? How does the trauma of being the only Asian person in your community affect British Asian writers raised in rural areas? Do you become preoccupied with race (where you could otherwise be writing about personal interests) or do you avoid it, ashamed of it?

Let’s think of some things that might affect our writing, that are to do with our identities and past experiences. If you feel like it, you can journal about these things. But feel free to speak aloud or write your answer ~ and, of course, you never know what you might come of use in your story!

I’m from Grimsby. My family worked on the dock. We think part of my family is Moroccan, but that it wasn’t spoken about because of attitudes of the time. Women worked in my family. My mum’s side of the family is from Ireland. They experienced severe poverty. I grew up in a rural area and did not know anyone who worked as a writer. My grandad, however, was a talented artist. He came from a dock working family, and got a full scholarship to the Slade. What is your background? Describe the attitudes your ancestors might have developed to cope with their circumstances. Is there anyone who was creative? Were they able to do that as a job? Write how your ancestors might react to the idea of you writing a novel. Are they encouraging or undermining or a mix? How much of themselves did your ancestors have to deny? Do you deny parts of yourself, to keep things on an even keel? What do you suppose the typical background of someone in the publishing industry is? Is it similar to yours?

In all of these prompts, it’s okay to feel sadness, if it comes, but you don’t need to read that in ~ honestly I think my background gives me perspective and resilience other, more classically privileged backgrounds don’t offer. Also, it’s my life, and so I like it because it’s mine. It’s just about understanding why our backgrounds might make us feel illegitimate as writers and noticing the specificities of our individual backgrounds.

My parents were supportive of our dreams. They worked full time, and we had a lot of time alone to play imaginatively. I was never told what to do with my life. They wanted us to dream big and be happy. They were both expressive people with firm opinions and sometimes big emotions that made me nervous to say some things around them ~ what were the shape of your early relationships to attachment figures? Have those relationships changed as you’ve aged? Were your attachment figures prescriptive or derisive about your future career options? Write how they might react to your writing a story. How does their opinion affect you? How does it make you feel in your body? Do you want to reply to them? What would you say?

In my mid-20s, my then-partner was hit by a car while riding his bicycle and almost died. At that time, I lost confidence with many things. I stopped skateboarding? For instance, but I also stopped being so confident about my writing. Age 23, I had ignored my agent, who told me not to write a book about an intersex character, and spent six months on GOLDEN BOY, which sold for a lot of money and in many languages, and went on to be loved by readers and win an award for importance to younger adult readers. But after the accident, I started to really listen to my agent and publisher in the U.K., who suggested I go particular ways I wasn’t interested in going. I listened to these people because they were older and successful and I assumed knew best. But now, I realise I know my writing best. Another very sad thing happened in my 30s. With my ex-partner, I lost 5 children, including a beautiful, big baby girl. They mean the world to me. I have no living children. For a long time after I lost my daughter, I did not write. I felt like a contract with life had been broken, and so I would no longer hold up my side of the bargain either. Sometimes we can’t. Now, a year on from losing my last baby, my grief means that sometimes I can’t do anything. About once every few months, I feel like a very heavy weight is crushing me and I have to lie there for about a day, until something changes. It’s impossible for me to write at these times, even though most days I easily write tens of pages of prose. Name a time when you were shaken. What has happened to you that caused you to stop? What experiences made you feel like you had no control over anything anyway, and so why bother? Name a time you felt small or ashamed or to blame. Consider that person who felt that way ~ do they deserve to write? What do you believe?

And then there are the things you might talk about in therapy. Do you struggle with something not covered by what I’ve described above?

Thanks for sticking with me through that exercise, and well done for being so generous as to give this time and consideration to your self.

So, onto the third part of this advice, and I’d love to say the third is to “remove what is blocking” you ~ but that’s easier said than done, and personally I have had therapy every week for the last 10 months and we inch slowly forward in this enormous task.

I think it’s too big an ask that we all essentially “get our shit together” before we write. But here’s what I think we can do…

When I was in Mexico, in the mountainous region of Chiapas, I took a small mushroom - in - chocolate and headed up to the church with the intention of journaling and spending time with two things I was struggling with. I had read that the mushroom would take away ego, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. When in the vestibule where one can pray / talk and light candles, I realised my thoughts had indeed changed form. No longer was I thinking “I am sad about this” “so I will not be sad, come on stop crying, get over yourself, you can’t do anything about this” or thoughts like “it’s your fault that this happened”. Basically guilt and shame and blame were gone. I was not commenting on my own feelings. I allowed them to be, so my thoughts started to flow like this: “I’m so sad”, “okay, let’s be sad”, “now I’ve cried this out”, “okay now what will we do?”, “there are only two ways to resolve this”, “and because I know myself I’ll take the one that suits me”.

There was no in-fighting of the soul. So, I’m not going to ask you to fix all your problems of self-worth. But I am going to ask that you don’t judge yourself for having them. That you consider them, like turning over stones to see the underside, and that you then give those thoughts and feelings a moment or two to be felt, to be heard, and not to be judged. Tell them, it’s alright that you’re here.

You are made up of all your parts, and the parts that make you able to write a story are also these parts. They inform your work. We don’t want to get rid of them. They are our lives, and we write from our lives.

Good luck with your work, and I’ll be back next week to answer another reader question.