Swing a hammer, write a page.

If you’re learning to become a woodworker or a writer, the most important thing is to make a lot of mistakes.  This means you’re developing skills, since not making mistakes means you aren’t actually working, just convincing yourself that you are.  The trick is to not be deterred by the mistakes, but rather have them teach you things.  Such as, don’t make the same mistakes more than once.  Two max, if you can help it. 

Before writing a novel, or building a house, figure out what you want to make.  For me, it starts in the imagination.  At this point, all you need is to see it with your mind’s eye while you’re driving a car, sitting on a beach or trying to fall asleep.  This is the basic plot; this is the floor plan.  Move your mind around and test how the various components can work with each other.  Both efforts are reasonably sequential:  this happens, then that; this goes here, so that can go there. 

When you finally get to your desk, or drawing board (mine are the same), sketching is handy to see if those mental playgrounds are more than fever dreams.  The goal is to hear yourself say, “That can work.”  The key for me at this stage is to not lose the sketches or rough story treatments, since the ideas will evaporate if not recorded. 

Assuming the rough paperwork survives, working drawings can proceed from there.  In this, the house designer has a clear advantage, since you have graph paper, standardized proportions, set engineering principles and a sturdy eraser to aid in the effort.  (Or if you’re technologically capable, a computer program.)   For the novel, some write out a complete outline.  I admire those people, but it’s not for me.  I’ve tried, but the outline always collapses soon after the writing begins (as in, the war plan never survives the first contact with the enemy).  Still, I jot down a lot of stuff – rough plot structure, progress of the story, potential scenes, character outlines, things that will help as I embark on the project. 

At this stage, the acts of building a house or writing a novel begin to diverge.  The house becomes more of a team activity, like a movie production, where you need to recruit specialists to do things like shoot the elevation, dig the foundation and pour a concrete basement.  With a novel, all you have is you, and you need to start writing, if you haven’t already – like me, eager to jump the gun.  With a house, the entire frame is raised in an exhilaratingly short period of time.  With a novel, you start building piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter. 

A house from there is a much slower process of filling in.  Roof, exterior, windows and doors, mechanicals, electric, insulation, sheetrock, trim.  Though after a while, the two activities of writing a book and building a house begin to re-converge.  The final finish of a house now more resembles editing a book.  The polishing, decorating, re-writing (more expensive with a house!), a million little aesthetic decisions.    

Craft is an old and overused word, but it applies to both woodworking and writing novels.  When you’re beyond the planning and plotting stages, the handwork makes the difference.  Getting those clauses in the right order and wrangling prepositions directly equates to cutting on the right side of the pencil line and fitting tight, symmetrical joints.  A sixteenth of an inch off at the beginning of trimming out a room can mean a half-inch failure at the end.  Same with a book.  What starts well, ends well. 

The process is never complete, though eventually, the book has to go to the printer, and you move into the house.  At first, all you see are the imperfections, the unfinished work.  You can’t do much about the published novel, but at least you can keep working on the house.  Either way, time will eventually settle in and you’ll accept that what you did is what you did. 

Maybe, with luck, you’ll actually be satisfied with the ultimate result, though you’ll be distracted by the next ungainly, terrifying projects already underway.