Everybody can write. And by that I mean EVERYBODY. A good percentage of the population of planet Earth has written at least one terrific paper for school and was told by their teacher: "Have you ever considered writing or journalism?", which had the gnarliest effect on their self-esteem. Some primodial psycho-sexual reaction that carved a set idea within the mind of the young and the feeble: Whenever things go wrong in their life, there will always be writing. Because they are writers, they've been told so at the youngest age.
I know so because I'm one of those who preferred to tiptoe around writing for a while, so that my absolute expectations of myself would remain safe and untouched. Truth is, there are many types of writers and the most passionate, dilligent and skilled ones are novelists. Everyone has a novel in their mind, but to put it on paper and make it work requires the equivalent of inner fortitude of the marathon runner. Writing a bombastic thousand word short story or essay over the span of a day is do-able. The higher your page count gets, the more complex your story will get and you will have the utmost difficulties to handle the set of variables you will have laid down in order to write a story worth reading.
Length is a problem. And here I don't discriminate. As you hop over the invisible bar of 25 000 words, your story will get complex. You will have to manage your variables and your beta readers WILL point out to incoherences in your tale. Sometimes even you will, while typing out. It's the infuriating truth of writing. You will change as you write your novel. Characters that were relevant at first will become cheesy and obnoxious, so you will want to tone them down and give them a more subtle emotional range than: Anger, Madness, Despair and Love. You will change and you will grow better. It's never going to be perfect and you will never like it as much as when it was in your head.
Leave that to your readers. When the words hit the paper and when you mail your manuscript, you're waiving your responsibility over your tale. You did the best you could and by the act of mailing it, you acknowledge that you've completed the task. Menial tasks with a tremendous underlying meaning. As you hear your manuscript fall to the bottom of the mailbox, your heart will go up in your throat as if you were taking a thousand feet leap of faith.
I'm at the end of my first draft. Things are infuriating and don't make any sense anymore. I'm sitting on a tangling Babel Tower that's threatening to crumble under a timid wind. There's no doubt I have more time to spend with it. Length can also be a comfortable problem. As long as your final idea is still clear and that you keep writing up, you're in a no man's land that doesn't need any particular effort but to write. Length can be comfortable, but everything has to end sometimes. As I am ramping up through the last pages, the wind blows at my face, every step is harder and the tower is tangling backwards.
I will have to end it someday soon.
Then it's editing.
