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There is a Novel Writing Workshop at the University of Bonn. I happen to be one of its teachers. In Germany, the university semester has started with a few weeks’ delay, although we can only meet the students digitally.

So I had to open the semester somehow. And I had to do it properly. And I had to do it from the tiny window of a zoom meeting, staring at my own face as it talked.

Here’s what that face of mine said:

Three things I would have liked to have known when I started out

 There are very many things I would have liked to have known when I started out telling stories, and writing books, and putting on plays. I would have liked to know, for example, that drinking one pot of black tea a day is perfect, because it keeps your hands warm and your eyes open. Three pots, on the other hand, are an attack on your heart and make you sweat in an unfavourable manner, so you really shouldn’t do that.

There are things I have learnt even more important than tea however, although that may be hard to believe. Things that I have found I need, truly need, to live and to survive as a story-teller. Here are three of them:

 First of all, I would have liked to have known that there is nothing better for your writing than truth.

Being truthful when you write, in everything you write. This begins with deciding what it is that you want to write. Not to write the book that a publisher, or your mum, or the larger demands of society, would require or like you to write; not to write the book that would please your editor if you’ve got one, or your best friend, or your partner; not to write the book that you think the world needs, or that you would like to read; instead, to write the book that you want to write.

In order to be truthful, you need to listen to yourself. You need to get know yourself. You need to realise that what you want is just as important and relevant as what everybody else wants. And you need to take the time and find out what pleases you to write, what is fun for you to put on the page.

And you need to be brave. Because being truthful means making yourself vulnerable. As Neil Gaiman says it so beautifully in Art Matters:[*]

 “The moment you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself.

That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

 Secondly, I would have liked to have known that there is one essential tool that you need to tell a story, any story, and to putting them out into the world: You cannot do it without trust.

Writing a novel, telling a story, means running for a cliff, and then to keep running and not to look down so that you do not realise that there is no ground under your feet.[†] This is true whether you write, or edit, or put it out into the world. You have to trust the process, and trust that the writing of each single word, each sentence, each chapter will end in a finished book. And a good one, too. Sometimes, the process might take you to a paradise. Sometimes, it may end with a shipwreck.[‡] But whatever the destination, you have to get onboard for it, otherwise it cannot take you anywhere. And you need to trust yourself. That you can bear and love and survive the journey.

 And I am not going to lie: Truth and trust, they can be exhausting.

So there is a third thing you need in order to survive:

It is kindness.

Telling stories is hard. Some may not believe it, but it is nevertheless true. Writing a book takes everything out of you. Each and every story will cost you. So first of all, you need to be kind to yourself. Take enough breaks, and do not ask too much of yourself. Follow the example of Stephen King: He sets himself a word count every day that he can easily manage. And that he does, every day. Sometimes it takes him two hourse, sometimes four. And then he stops. Or so he says.[§]

And secondly, try and find a place to work that is good for you, and, if you can, outside of your home, so that you do not live life in a work space. Thirdly, allow yourself leisure, and friends, and love, and to have fun. Play video games. Go to the movies. Put on a play. See your friends. Have lovers. (Though not the secret kind if you can help it.) Spend times with humans you love, and who love and support you. Fourthly, move your body, for you will need it to write those books. And fifthly, to write what you want and what is fun and important to you, that is also a kindness towards yourself.

This is not an office job. Do not try to work it like an office job. You have to be kind to yourself, or you will not make it.

And be kind to others, too. Be kind to the people in your stories. Every person in your story is their own person. Even when they are a fox. We need to understand them. We need to love them. Whether they are similar to us or very different, whether you would like for them to be your friends or would fend them off with a stick. Especially when you would fend them off with a stick, because then they might be more difficult to understand. We need to understand the people in our books, otherwise we do them wrong. And through that, we do humans wrong that are not fictional. We do wrong by humanity. By what makes us human. You and me. All of us. Shakespeare knew this. All the people in all his plays are full of folly, and folly is just what we need, because people are strange. We are strange. The world is strange. But it is so beautiful. And if we do not observe – if we do not look more closely, listen more closely, dig deeper – if we do not take the time and the effort to listen and look and to understand, and sometimes it can take years – then we are failing as story-tellers. We are failing as authors. Then we can go and write some thing or another for television and become rich and go to glamorous parties. But we will never touch a soul in our lives. We will only be a distraction. We will not change anyone’s life. We will not save someone. We will not give them meaning when they are desperate, or make them laugh when they are sad, or remind them that sometimes it is all right to be sad and that they do not have to pretend they are fine all the time. They will not find friends in our books, people who go with them through a lifetime, and life is hard, no matter how privileged. Life is hard. We have to do what we love. We have to write what we love. And we have to love what we write, and who we write, and the person who writes.

So in the end, this is about love, and about truth, and about trust.

Be kind.

Be truthful.

Trust yourself, and trust the story.

 I wish I’d known all of this when I started out.

And the truth is: I am still learning it myself.

[*] I whole-heartedly recommend that you go out and get yourself a copy of this book, because it might truly save you on a day where you feel you cannot go on telling stories, and that day will come, trust me.

[†] This, too, I have learnt from Neil Gaiman in his masterclass. He is my close personal friend, evidently.

[‡] Another thing I have learnt from Neil Gaiman in his masterclass. I highly recommend it. You can find it on MasterClass.com.

[§] Or so he says in his book On Writing; if I am to believe my good friend Robin, who will not stop raving about that book to me.