Around 12:10 a.m. on January 1st, just after 2019 began, I made what I hope will prove to be my worst choice of the entire year: I started watching the latest “Black Mirror” project on Netflix, alone, in the dark.
“Black Mirror” is eerie at best and often genuinely disturbing, and probably should not be watched alone in the dark in any case. In particular it should not be watched under those conditions when it’s not just a regular episode, but a stand-alone interactive movie that is asking you questions and presenting long stretches of new narrative based on your decisions. Because then? So much for sleep.
The name of the “Black Mirror” movie is “Bandersnatch,” and its choose-your-own-adventure format has given rise to the shorthand “bandersnatching,” which can either mean 1) watching the movie (not as interesting for our purposes today) or 2) making a series of irrevocable choices from behind the scenes.
So though you’ve probably never thought of it this way, you are, in short, bandersnatching your whole life. In the “Black Mirror” episode/movie, you’re bandersnatching Stefan — will he choose Sugar Puffs or Frosties for breakfast? take what he’s offered or refuse? go into a certain building or off down the street? — but of course, that’s not how life works. We may not be fully in charge, but no one else is, either, so it’s our choices, our decisions, that make the difference.
And sometimes it can feel like someone else is bandersnatching your writing career. Early in a traditional publishing career, someone else, an agent, is making the decision on whether or not to ask for your full manuscript when you send them a query letter or pitch them at a conference, and then makes the decision on whether to represent you; and in any author’s career regardless of publishing format, someone else, a reader, is making the individual decision of whether or not to buy the book. There are editors and sales teams and Costco decision makers and cover designers and book clubs and event organizers and festival committees and awards judges: sometimes it feels like everyone gets to make decisions about your book/s but you.
But it’s you, deep down. You’re bandersnatching. You’re making the most important choices.
Not to spoil too much of the actual “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” but there’s a choice early on that seems very easy to make — and it leads to an almost-immediate dead end, abruptly bringing all the possibilities down to zip. Game over.
That’s what your choice to write or not write is. You’re the only one who can completely shut yourself down. If you don’t do that, then everything else is still possible. You may run into walls — mostly figurative ones — but you can always step back from the wall and hunt for the place in the wall that’s really a door. You can do that a nearly infinite number of times.
My new novel Woman 99 comes out in March, and it is very hard not to view every single choice as one I have to say yes to. Should I pitch that essay? Yes. Send a note to that bookseller? Yes. Schedule that event? Yes. Spend hours on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc., reaching out to readers? Yes, yes and yes.
And for many writers, every choice in their career can feel utterly momentous — and irreversible. Should you write the massive epic fantasy novel or the simmering, dark domestic suspense? Should you accept that agent’s offer of representation? Should you approve a cover you don’t really love based on how excited everyone at your publisher seems about it? Should you apply to that retreat, start that new series, collaborate with that other author on a new project? The choices really never end.
Only, as “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” shows, not every choice makes a big difference. Again, not to spoil things for those who want to try every option for themselves, but when two choices are presented, there’s no guarantee one leads to a good outcome and one less good. Sometimes a decision is just a decision; sometimes a slight fork in the path leads you back to the road you were already on. It isn’t really possible to know what matters and what doesn’t until after the choice is made — and whether the place it leads to is the best, worst, or somewhere in the middle.
I don’t know about you, but I find that very freeing. It’s exhausting to say yes to absolutely everything. It’s exhausting to agonize over each individual choice until the wee hours of the morning, believing that if you just get it right this time, everything will open up to you like a flower and you’ll never worry again. (Spoiler for the writer’s life: nope, you will always worry.) It’s better to make some choices, concentrate your efforts on what you think is likely to have the biggest impact, and just push hard in that direction.
No matter what point you’re at in your writing career, I think that’s good advice. Recognize that the most important decisions are yours; look at each decision and measure its potential impact; and once the decision is made, don’t agonize about all the other directions you could have gone in.
Or to put it in terms Stefan would appreciate: just go ahead and serve up the Sugar Puffs.
About Greer Macallister
Greer Macallister's debut novel THE MAGICIAN'S LIE was an Indie Next pick, Target Book Club selection, and a USA Today bestseller, and has been optioned for film by Jessica Chastain's Freckle Films. Her novel GIRL IN DISGUISE, about pioneering private investigator Kate Warne, received a starred review from PW, which called it "a well-told, superb story." Now out in e-book and hardcover, her new novel WOMAN 99 is forthcoming in paperback in February 2020.
Thank you for this post, Greer.
It really puts some perspective to the issues with which I’ve been wrestling the last few months. I appreciate the needed KITP to simply quit wallowing and decide.
Glad it found you at the right time. Good luck, whatever you decide!
“That’s what your choice to write or not write is. You’re the only one who can completely shut yourself down. If you don’t do that, then everything else is still possible. ”
Absolutely this!!
I haven’t been very involved in writing comments and blogging, tweeting about writing things, etc… because it’s been YEARS since I self-published my first book. I had the sequel written and ready to be edited about a year after and then…nothing. Very little new writing, very little editing, and any comment I’d write was referencing the exactly what I’ve just written! For years!
I’ve put a lot of time and effort into analyzing exactly what my problem has been, and worked through some issues, and over the last year been writing some new stuff and editing that damn sequel, but still nowhere near the output needed to even call myself a fiction writer.
Some of my issues are related exactly to what you write about above. Every editing decision, plotting decision, life decision seemed to have such weight and significance. What if I make the wrong decision!
At the beginning of the year I didn’t make a resolution, but I did make a decision. I realized that if I would have been editing even just 15 min each day I’d have the damn sequel done by now, and probably have written another book, too! So that was my decision – I’ll edit/write 15 min every day and within my editing decisions I try not to get too wrapped up with turning those into life or death dramas, too.
So far it’s going well. I’ve been editing every day minus one since January 1st. And while it’s slow progress, I’m still making progress. I just loved your post because it’s so relatable to my life. Thanks!
Lara, I love that decision! Progress is progress, slow or fast or anyhow. Best of luck.
Thank you for this! I am the agonizing type ;-) At the moment, there are not really a lot of choices though, as I am still in the very early stages of a writer’s life (= revising draft 2). So the big choice is really: do I listen to the mean little voice that tells me my story is boring and the world does not need another manuscript – or do I push the little voice away and go on following my dream? I try to do the second … and we will see where that gets me.
That mean little voice does get into our ear sometimes, doesn’t it? Good for you for pushing it away.
Greer, thank you for this post, which I find to be perfectly timed for me as I try to find the time, the magic, the voice to complete one of the Works in Progress that is vying to be my second novel (which one should I work on? is it a novel or should it be a memoir? YA or adult fiction? 1st person or 3rd? — I have tried each of these, hoping for a decision to make itself clear, going down each path and finding, if not walls, no gathering momentum.)
My favorite advice is to make a decision and push hard in that direction, whether in writing or any other avenue. Not easy to do, but in the end the only way forward.
Sometimes possibilities are wonderful, and sometimes they’re paralyzing. Testing different paths for momentum at this stage seems like a wise choice. Good luck as you go forward.
This post is so perfectly timed to inspire renewed writing efforts after a hiatus, too long. Thanks & best in new year.
Best to you too!
I believe that if you agonize over this book or that and/or struggle with an idea for months or years, then you aren’t supposed to write that book. Toss it out and work on something new. You should absolutely LOVE your story and especially your characters. Stressing over a story you can’t finish is a waste of time that could be spent writing something else. I have written 70 books over 36 years and loved every one of them. I wrote them with no doubts or writers block. Most of them poured right out of me. Why? 2 reasons. 1- the minute something felt wrong about the book and I felt myself struggling to write it – and/or 2 – couldn’t get “into” my characters and couldn’t get excited about them, I tossed the whole story and went on with something different. However, that seldom happened because I have never just followed popular genres of the moment. I always stuck with what I LOVE. If you love your genre, your story and it’s characters will flow through your fingers effortlessly. You have only one decision to make. – WRITE!
Have you watched The Good Place? I relate best the character of Chidi, a young man who cannot make a decision. Decision making is often hard. It’s why when I go out to eat, I tend to order the same thing. That’s just one less thing using up what little decision-making fuel I have in my decision gas tank.
This writing career takes every drop of fuel I can afford, and I’m sputtering more than going. In any event, thanks for your post. I shall keep these wise words in mind.