Writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint. So, if you’re feeling stuck, give yourself small goals to work toward, like a daily word count. If you focus on writing a thousand words a day, you won’t feel overwhelmed by the fact that you’ve been trapped in a submarine for the past year and a half.
Find a room of your own. Virginia Woolf said that all you need is a room with a door. The torpedo room in a nuclear-powered submarine works just fine.
Stop waiting for the ideal conditions in which to write. They don’t exist. Stephen King would write in the laundry room of his trailer. Faulkner wrote “As I Lay Dying” while working the night shift at a power plant. You, too, can work anywhere, including in a claustrophobic underwater vessel. And don’t worry about that weird hissing noise coming from the pipes or the recorded voice on the speakers bleating: “Warning!” A writer must learn to ignore all distractions.
Take inspiration from your literary heroes. Ask yourself: What would Jack Ryan in “The Hunt for Red October” do? Oh, wait, thinking about Jack Ryan is what got you into this mess in the first place.
Don’t beat yourself up. Just because you accidentally locked yourself in a submarine and couldn’t figure out how to reopen the hatch doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer. It just means you’re bad at opening doors. If anything, this whole ordeal proves that you’re really good at doing research for your novel. That’s gotta count for something. And look on the bright side: a lot of writers would kill for this kind of peace and quiet.
Try taking a break and then looking at your material with fresh eyes. This will help you notice new things, like how the hull is currently bathed in an ominous red light and the alarms are making that scary alarm sound, indicating that the submarine has somehow maneuvered itself into hostile waters. Did you accidentally lean on a button or something?
Combat perfectionism by quickly jotting down whatever comes to mind. Like, why did Sean Connery have a Scottish accent in the film version of “The Hunt for Red October”? Wasn’t he supposed to be a Russian submarine captain? But he’s just so darn charming in the movie that you almost forget about the whole accent thing. Just something to think about, I guess, but not for too long because an enemy ship is on your tail.
Accept that you have a lot going on right now. You’re scared. You’re alone. You’re down to your last pen, and it’s the annoying one that leaks. It’s O.K. to step away from your work. Your novel will still be there tomorrow or whenever the air stops having that weird smell. Oh, yeah, in addition to being in hostile territory, the submarine is running out of oxygen rapidly. Sidenote: How good are you at holding your breath?
Do not panic. Yelling at me is only making you consume more oxygen. Also, I’m not really here. I’m just a voice in your head that you’ve been hearing ever since the oxygen level started dropping—coincidence?
Walk away from your novel. Seriously, if you want to survive, walk away from your laptop and take a look at the control panel. Try flipping all the switches to see if that does anything. I don’t know—it always seems to work in the movies!
Wow, you actually did it! You somehow managed to narrowly escape death and get the submarine to resurface! The air is breathable, the comms are working. Now would be a great time to start querying literary agents. ♦
