A bit about how I choose topics for these diaries —
In the beginning, I never knew what the theme would be until I started writing. It was part of the covenant with myself when I started Diary of a Novel eight months ago. There’d be no strategizing, no overthinking, no incessant revision. This would be a journal of spontaneity and feelings in flow and we’d see where they’d lead.
I tend to write my diaries on Saturday morning, when I’m at the farm, after I’ve eaten breakfast and taken our dog Ladybug for a walk — which today was replaced by sprints across 7-foot-tall hay bales, where she attempts to knock me off and I get the adrenaline jolt of running for my life while being chased by a 100-pound Bernese Mountain dragon, which is far more potent than coffee. After, I’d loaf on a daybed upstairs, load up a blank-page diary, and follow a vibe, like a surfer looking for a wave.
In recent months, though, I’ve noticed a shift. Around Wednesday, usually while driving to and from tennis, I begin to hear a phrase in my head. The Tao of Celine. Or The Old Things aren’t Working. Or 50 Pieces of Joy. A phrase that jangles around in my head for a few more days and becomes the title of the week’s diary.
This week, I heard the echo of three words.
Don’t. Be. Delusional.
It’s something a judge on my favorite reality TV show once flicked at a contestant — who was indeed hopelessly delusional — but there was also something propulsive about the phrase. I find myself saying it to myself repeatedly, in work, in love, in life, a reminder that even though I am a fantasy author, I cannot live in my fantasies, and that often what I want to happen isn’t what’s actually happening.
This week, the phrase has become a mantra as I re-read Part 2 of New Novel. In other words: is this good? Or do I want it to be good so badly I’m convincing myself it’s good?
Even asking myself those questions yielded a new strategy in revision. When I’m re-reading my work, I pretend it belongs to a debut author, who is auditioning for my attention. This forces me into a neutral, almost cool critical eye, and I’m no longer self-identified with my own work or ego. Delusion becomes distance. Revision becomes less precious, more aggressive about heightening the level.
(Another funny trick which you may not understand until you try it — when revising, I pretend the entire manuscript is written in Chinese or a language I can’t read. This disarms my conscious brain, while my subconscious reads the words and calmly, smoothly makes edits.)
And yet, for all this work of countering delusion…I’m also fond of some delusion, because without it, I might still be a pharmaceutical consultant, which was my first occupation out of college and which I was brutally fired from for being both bad at the job and for secretly working on my fairy tales in the corner.
At the time, Harry Potter was exploding as a phenomenon and I found myself entranced by the idea that you could write fantasy novels for children with such enormous girth and complexity and turn it into a career. Somewhere deep inside, I felt the stirring: I can do this too. But oh my God — talk about delusion! I’m 22 years old, thinking I can write my own Harry Potter??? I shake my head now at the audacity and ego. Which is also why I didn’t pursue it at the time, other than hobbying in office corners. But somewhere deep inside, that delusion was still slipping around like a fish that refused to be caught. Until ten years later, it resurfaced stronger than ever and The School for Good and Evil was born.
I wish I could say I’ve mellowed in my ambitions, but New Novel is even more delusional.
When I first started working on it, I knew how big a risk it was and how ambitious the book would be. And yet for the first 7 months of writing, there was something off. As if the delusion had been too big this time and I should go back to fairy tales.
I remember sending the first 60 pages to my agent and he called me fairly quickly and said: This is not good.
All I felt was palpable relief. I know it’s not, I replied. Thank you for not deluding me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
That night, I threw out the manuscript, started from scratch.
And quickly, I realized: the problem wasn’t that I was too ambitious, too delusional. It was that I wasn’t delusional enough.
Instead of a traditional book, I changed tactics. New Novel became a visual and prose experiment, a living documentary that attempts a new kind of form.
I hired my own team of artists and designers at significant expense. I started mapping out a completely different way of telling a story, like I was directing a movie in book form.
Every night, I fall asleep thinking: What. Am. I. Doing.
It’s utterly, completely delusional.
And yet, unlike the first go-round, this time it feels 100% right.
The balance between self-delusion and self-honesty is such a strange one to articulate, because you’re balancing a mysterious calling with the hard yards of executing an often unexplainable vision. Writing a book — particularly this book — can often feel like you’re Noah building the ark, when no one understands what you’re doing or why you’re doing it until it’s finally done and you can say “Here. See.” But honestly, the true joy of art isn’t in that moment of completion. It’s in the daily leap into the darkness. The quest to follow this mysterious calling to wherever it leads.
It’s also why I find the platitude “Follow your Dreams” so limited. To me, the best parts of life are in discovering and achieving dreams you never thought possible. In following the flow to some strange new shore.
Another funny story about the nature of delusion.
My best friend in college was this beautiful, charismatic ingenue who had the style of a young Audrey Hepburn. She was a throwback and I couldn’t see how any boy of a modern age would be good enough for her. She couldn’t either. “I really think I’m meant for George Clooney,” she’d tell me. And I not only believed her; I insisted that it was true and she had to find a way to get to George.
It became a source of hope, fun, comfort, as she suffered through dates with useless college boys, and it even became a security blanket when she met a man she genuinely loved and began seriously dating. Soon, they were considering marriage.
But deep in the back of both our minds, we still wondered about George.
Then she met him.
Complete accident. DNC fundraiser.
They were alone in a corner, just the two of them, and she realized that this was the moment, the one her whole life had built up to, and that the delusion wasn’t delusion after all. They talked. She waited for sparks…
…and waited.
“Nothing,” she said. “Both of us felt nothing.”
A few weeks later, George announced his surprise engagement to a woman he’d been hiding from everyone: Amal Alamuddin.
Who is an exact, exact lookalike of my friend.
A short while later, my friend married her wonderful boyfriend and life went on its way. But somewhere in the tale was a lesson: that delusion often has the seeds of some deeper, more magical understanding planted within.
Do you ever feel the push and pull between delusion and honesty in your life and art?
Until next week…
100% all of the time. yes. yes i do, soman! 😂🤪❤️
I love this! Well done for staring over after seven months. And for trying new things!!!
I also want to share: I somewhat accidentally learned a neat trick for developmental editing- I write (or print) only the right hand page. Then when I read the draft I make notes on the left page only. It's as if doing this splits my brain into editor and writer. In my case it also doesn't waste paper because those left pages fill quickly with notes.