Live the Delusion!

We hear the phrases all the time: Set realistic goals, don’t get ahead of yourself, write what you know.  On a bigger scale we sometimes hear: Live The Dream.

For a writer, or those who would like to be one (or, quite frankly, anyone who wants to do anything out of the ordinary), I say: Live The Delusion.

(No Backstory Bashing Allowed!)

The Delusion I’m referring to comes in many sizes, but it comes in only one shape. The Delusion tells you that you’re going to succeed. Not only that, but also that success is just around the corner. And it’s going to be SPECTACULAR.

The biggest version of the Delusion is the one you need to get started. If you take the commonly accepted view that overnight success takes 15 years, well… who really wants that? Fifteen years is a long time. Thinking about it that way demotivates you, it allows you to tinker and pause and do other things, “Cause hey, I’ve got 15 years.” Thinking the big break is close makes you work furiously. It makes you focus. Like running for a train that you don’t want to miss.

In my case, I had tinkered around with writing a bit in high school and college, but nothing serious. Then, after reading several books I absolutely loved, I went to the Maui Writer’s Conference—one of the greatest conferences ever, which is sadly no more (unless it’s been restarted). I came home fully inspired. I had a plot in mind, I had a writing plan, and I had just enough knowledge to get started.

I sat down and got to it, despite having a full-time job. I turned down invitations to parties and dinners with friends and golf outings so I could work on the book at night and on weekends. I did the calculations over and over. If I could just write 10 pages a week, I’d be finished with the book in seven months. The Delusion had arrived, and I bought in. It was going to happen. It was all going to go smoothly. It was going to be spectacular. I remember sitting at the computer after finishing a chapter and rubbing my hands together like a super-villain. I literally recall telling myself, “You’re going to be rich and famous by the end of the year.”

Now that might seem a little over the top, but this is what it felt like, and with success so close at hand I had this feeling that there was no time to waste. That feeling gave me the ability to say no to the parties, to skip the dinners with friends, and to pass on golf outings at some really nice courses. I lived in Palm Springs at the time.

The belief that success was right around the corner made the work feel urgent, and that’s important. If I thought success was 10 years (look I can’t even say 15, lol) away I would have signed off and gone to the driving range and probably still be finishing chapter nine of my first book.

I did manage to finish my first draft that year. It took longer than seven months, but it was in time for the next Maui Writer’s Conference. I went back to the conference, thinking, I’m going to find an agent. Or maybe an editor will just buy it outright. There are some Hollywood people here. They’re probably going to want to make a bid. We’ll see.

But then I went to a few panels. I learned something about passive voice. Passive voice? What’s that? I began scanning my manuscript—the whole thing was passive voice. It was like I had perfected a new style of writing: the 100% passive-voice thriller. Ugh.

Back to the drawing board. Reset the Delusion. I thought to myself: I still have a great plot and great characters. I’ll just rewrite this and get an agent next year. I can wait 12 more months to be rich and famous.

A year goes by. No golf. (Not much, anyway.) Lots of weekends in front of the computer. Some nights and holidays in front of my new laptop. The new draft is finished. No passive voice. Except where I liked it for style purposes.

Back to Maui—man, I love that place! Where are those agents and editors and Hollywood types? This time I hear a speaker talking about action, using strong nouns and good verbs, and avoiding too many adjectives and adverbs—those tricky little -ly words that make you think you’re describing something precisely but mostly weaken your writing. (See what I did there.)

Quick, scan the manuscript. Dammit. I count at least a hundred adverbs in every chapter.

Deep breath. All you need is one more rewrite. One more year. Success is so close, I can taste it. Thank you, Delusion, for being so powerful.

Next conference, all was looking good. Some agents wanted to read my first chapter. I sent it to them. No bites. Hmmm…

I get home. I decide to go to ThrillerFest in New York, because that’s where all the big agents and editors are. I get my query letter together. I practice my pitch. Two weeks before the conference, I read this article in Writer’s Digest about point of view.

Point of View? What’s that? It talks about head hopping and how that puts distance between the reader and the characters. Let me see…

Yep, head hopping everywhere. I mean I was trying to let the reader see what everyone is thinking. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

An honest note—even after reading the article, I wasn’t convinced this was a bad thing. Then I happened to read Dr. No, the Ian Fleming book, the first James Bond book I’d ever read. It’s a great story, a fun book, but he’s constantly jumping between Bond’s head and the other characters in the scene. It feels more like you’re being told a story than living it. It feels more like you’re watching from a distance instead of experiencing the setting through Bond’s eyes.

So… two weeks of mad rewriting follows. I fix the point-of-view problem. I get on a red-eye and fly to New York. Then it’s a three-hour bus ride from JFK to the hotel—why, New York, why? It’s like 30 miles. The flight from Arizona was only four hours, and that’s like two thousand miles. But I digress.

Exhausted but thankfully still Delusional, I arrive in time for the agents’ lunch. I sit in the back and give the worst pitch ever—just ask my agent—she will confirm that she only asked me to send her a chapter out of pity. I agree to send her 10 pages.

A week later I had an agent. Six months later, I had a couple different publishers bidding on the manuscript which became BLACK RAIN.

It had only been about seven years since I started. It didn’t feel like seven years, because the entire time I was living in the Delusion and that keeps you going. 

Now, I said the Delusion comes in one shape, but all different sizes. 

The same Delusion is required to start each book. Ideas are easy. Staring at a blinking cursor and a blank page one, knowing you have 450 more to write, is hard. But if you live in the Delusion that it’s all going to come together, you don’t freeze up. You don’t get stuck editing and re-editing chapter four because it’s not perfect. You move forward because success is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. And to get to that corner, you have to go forward, not stay where you are.

You need another size Delusion to fix your crappy first draft. But as long as you live in the Delusion—this’ll be easy to fix—then you won’t freak out and get stuck. 

The final form of the Delusion is the biggest and the smallest. This one is needed to hit send on the email that your manuscript is attached to. This should be the most joyous part, but it’s HARD.

Hitting send requires you to let go of control. Let others see your efforts and worse yet, judge you for them. You need the Delusion to tell you, they’re going to love this. I’ll probably be rich and famous by the end of the year; all I have to do is press this little button and…

Then you hit send and instantly feel sick but also relieved, and honestly a little lost.  Thankfully the Delusion soon chimes in. The next book, it says, is going to be even better.

I’ll admit that my writing process on the NUMA FILES is different, easier in some ways and harder in other ways. When Clive Cussler was still alive, I would work with him on the concepts, and then he’d send me off to write a section to see how it looked.

Having Clive to work with made it easier because I knew the book was going to get published, I knew it would have a big audience. More importantly, Clive was there to get me back on track if I went astray. Which never happened, as I recall.

The harder part is: It comes with a lot more pressure. The publishers build their publishing schedule around tent-pole authors like Clive. Once they announce a pub date, there is not a lot of wiggle room, so you have to get it right the first time. There’s also a big audience to please. So, the Delusion has to change size again. It says: You were made for this, and they’re going to love your take on the NUMA FILES. So far, Clive’s readers have embraced me with open arms. I’m thankful for that.

COLD FIRE is the 15th book in the series for me. And it’s without a doubt one of the best. To some extent, it’s a throwback to the Cold War, with three superpowers instead of just two, all of them hunting for an American aircraft that went down in the Arctic Ocean. The Chinese are already there with a nuclear-powered icebreaker, and the Russians are putting half their fleet to sea, but the plane—and a weapon that could radically alter the balance of power in the world—is nowhere to be found. As the three powers are drawn inexorably toward conflict, Kurt, Joe, and the rest of the NUMA team must figure out where the plane actually went, who took it, and, more crucially, why.

Ironically, I started working with Clive almost 15 years after I started writing. Hmm… Overnight success? It also dawned on me one night that, as a writer who’d admired Clive all his life, I wasn’t living the Delusion anymore. I was living the dream.

So Live the Delusion and work furiously, and you’ll almost certainly reach your dream.

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