On writing community and demonic compulsion

What does it take to write a novel? In 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley says that the desire to write a novel is the only prerequisite needed to write a novel. That’s not terribly helpful for the aspiring novelist, is it? She ponders other sources of inspiration: a love of reading and of losing oneself in other worlds and other characters, a love affair with language.

John Gardner, in On Becoming a Novelist, gives a list of what he calls “indicators” that distinguish the novelist: verbal sensitivity, the accuracy and originality of the writer’s eye, the storyteller’s intelligence (wit, obstinacy, childishness, the patience of a cat, and a criminal streak of cunning, among other things), and, finally, demonic compulsiveness.

For more than twenty years, I’ve toiled on a series of urban fantasy books, publishing the first one, Only the Moon Howls, in 2013. For much of this time, I didn’t exhibit demonic compulsiveness. I worked at a demanding job I mostly enjoyed while raising two children. Months slipped past me without looking at the draft. For a long time, I didn’t consider myself a novelist, but someone who had characters living in her head, someone with a desire—however muffled or trampled on—to tell their stories.

Ten years ago, it started to trickle into my head that maybe I was a novelist. I had haphazardly made notes for the second book, The Wolf’s Den, but little writing had taken place. By chance, I met my first writing buddy, someone as interested in talking about writing as I was. Over the next four years, my friend and I exchanged our writing, critiqued each other, and wrote together in coffee shops, wineries, and bookstores. I learned the joy of accountability, which is not as onerous or burdensome as the word might sound.

If I gave myself permission to be a novelist, then I could take classes on the craft of writing. I was fortunate to be living in Denver at that time, home to the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, a welcoming and supportive place for writers to meet and improve their craft. The 2020 pandemic sent us scuttling to Zoom, which made connecting with other writers in far places a delightful possibility.

After the second book, The Wolf’s Den, was published in 2021, I was ready to jump into the third book in the series. This time around, I built networks of other writers. I committed to a regular writing discipline. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Not everything I wrote made it into the novel, but all of it made me a better writer.

I doubt I would have kept at this series without my writing buddies, without inspiring teachers like Chip Livingston, and without the support and structure of many writing workshops, notably Novel Bootcamp at Lighthouse and the Manuscript Program at Pioneer Valley Writer’s Workshop. Because of my lovely community, the third novel, Blue Moon, will be published in November 2026.

What does it take to finish a novel? Certainly, the will to finish: Gardner’s demonic compulsiveness. For me, finding community was also essential.

What’s essential for you to finish? Leave me a comment!