Holly Robinson | The Risky Business of Writing Fiction

There was a huge stir recently when novelist Kazuo Ishiguro published his new fantasy novel, THE BURIED GIANT. The cause of the controversy had little to do with the novel itself—the world is littered with fantasy novels—but was sparked by the fact that its author is a British writer famous for understated novels of manners like “The Remains of the Day,” which won the Booker Prize.

The key question on everyone's minds was this: Why the heck is this guy abandoning the safe haven of his own genre and trespassing onto the turf of fantasy writers, with his swollen tale of an amnesiac couple wandering through a land populated by knights and ogres?

Even Ishiguro's wife had her doubts. She called the book's dialogue “laughable” when he first showed an early draft of the book to her ten years ago, and told him in no uncertain terms to put that book away and never show it to anyone.

And yet, here it is, out in the world a decade later. Yes, the book is getting some admittedly mixed reviews. But, my God, this guy should be peacock proud. What an act of courage, for Ishiguro to take that risk and write the book he wanted to write. I am stunned. Thrilled. And hugely inspired.

My new novel, HAVEN LAKE, isn't my first—far from it. It is my third published novel with New American Library/Penguin Random House. Still, despite the fact that I have now been writing fiction longer than my children have been tying their own shoelaces, I am terrified every time I risk starting a new book, because I have these sorts of questions buzzing through my brain:

What if I run out of steam before the publisher's deadline?

What if I get halfway through writing this new book and the point of view doesn't work?

What if readers don't like this book as much as they liked my last one?

What if these characters, so dear and real to me—Hannah, who raises Icelandic sheep after her Vietnam vet husband dies so tragically after the mysterious drowning of a child on their farm; Sydney, a child psychologist about to marry a man whose troubled teenaged son runs away at the start of the book; and Dylan, the teenager who feels he has lost everything after his mother dies—go out into the world and get rejected?

Hell, what if I get hit by a bus before the book is even sold in bookstores in April?

Or, what if a meteor hits the earth just as I'm going to my book launch party?

Writing fiction is a raw and risky business. You conceive of ideas and carefully craft sentences while sitting in your comfy flannel shirt and sweat pants, a cat on your lap, a cup of tea at your elbow. You see these scenes playing out in front of you, and when the writing is going well, it's like taking dictation. When the writing is not going well, it's like listening to a third grade jazz band playing the theme from Star Wars on their trumpets and squeaky violins.

It doesn't matter so much how the writing goes when you're alone, because it's only you and the words on the page. But, when you let other things into your head—your editor, your publicist, your potential readers, the marketplace, your brand as a writer, your sales rank on Amazon—you can become paralyzed with fear, because fear is an extremely close cousin to risk.

So, how did Ishiguro complete this valiant act of writing something completely different? For that matter, why did he keep writing, when writing is so hard on the ego?

Probably for the same reason all novelists do, I imagine. We can only know how the stories playing in our heads will turn out if we write them down. That is what propels us forward, the same way we hope our readers will be inspired to keep turning the pages we write: to find out how the stories end.

About HAVEN LAKE

Sydney Bishop hasn’t returned to Haven Lake, her idyllic childhood home, since a pair of shocking, tragic deaths shattered her family when she was only sixteen. Now a child psychologist engaged to marry a successful surgeon, Sydney has worked hard to build a relationship with Dylan, her fiancé’s teenage son, so she feels nothing but empathy when he runs away—until she discovers that his hitchhiking journey has led him to Haven Lake and her mother Hannah’s sheep farm.

Sydney returns to Haven Lake for the first time in twenty years to coax the boy home. Against her daughter’s wishes, Hannah offers to take Dylan in until he’s ready to reveal his own troubling secrets. Now, for Dylan’s sake as well as their own, Sydney and Hannah must confront the devastating events that tore them apart and answer the questions that still haunt their family—and the suspicious surrounding community—about what really caused two people to die on their farm those many years ago.