I wrote The Best Laid Plans 20 years ago!

Writing life: 81

As I’ve written in this space before, I came to writing late. I was 45 when I wrote my first novel. I did write a handful of less than stellar short stories in the eighties and nineties—none submitted anywhere, and none featuring even a scintilla of humour. But I consider writing my debut novel, The Best Laid Plans, now twenty years ago, to be the true start of my writing life (such as it is).

Finally, after several years of never getting around to it, it was in the spring of 2005 when I began writing my first novel.

At the time, I had no idea if I’d finish writing it. I really didn’t know what I was doing. But somehow, leaning on untested writerly instincts alone, and paying attention to how I felt—in my gut—every step of the way, I seemed to stumble upon, and refine (an on-going exercise) a writing process that worked for me—and still does. If I felt uneasy in my writing, I’d change something up. If I felt good, I kept on going.

And soon, the fact that I started loving my writing sessions, and what they yielded, told me I was on the right track. To be clear, that didn’t mean the novel I was writing was necessarily any good, it just meant that I thought I’d figured out how I write best. Simply and succinctly put, uncertainty about the story was my nemesis. I needed to know my story backwards and forwards, side to side, and up and down, before writing the manuscript. So, yes, as a writer, I’ve always been a hardcore, inveterate planner—an architect who designs novels, and an engineer who builds them.

I’m an engineer by academic training. In short, I engineer my novels.

It may not surprise you to learn that I’m an engineer by academic training.

As I’ve noted before in earlier posts, I feel very fortunate that I was somehow able to sort out my own writing process on my very first novel. And every novel I’ve written since has reinforced my belief that I am writing the way I am supposed to write—the way I write best. In fact, I’ve come to believe that determining how one writes best, is the writer’s first responsibility.

But back to the story of writing my first novel twenty years ago...

After mapping out the story and developing a detailed outline, I started to write it, chapter-by-chapter, in chronological order. There was no skipping ahead and writing a scene later in the novel. I just kept writing one chapter after another, in order.

At one point early in the writing of the manuscript, I bought a large blue three-ring binder and placed it on my writing table as additional incentive. Every time I finished another chapter to my satisfaction, I printed it out, used my trusty three-hole punch, and loaded it into the binder. I kept that big blue binder in my field of view and tracked my own progress as the stack of white pages grew.

I won’t recount, chapter and verse, what happened after I finished that manuscript two decades ago—you can read my early Substack posts about my “unorthodox journey to the published land”—but suffice it to say that the manuscript that still resides in that big blue binder is virtually the same one that’s between the covers of the initially self-published edition and the subsequent McClelland & Stewart edition of The Best Laid Plans.

(L) The self-published edition and the (R) McClelland & Stewart edition.

After its humble, self-published beginnings, The Best Laid Plans miraculously became the gift that keeps on giving. It won the 2008 Leacock Medal for Humour. It landed me a literary agent and a publishing deal with McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House. It somehow won the 2011 edition of CBC’s Canada Reads, and was then adapted as a six-part CBC television miniseries and a stage musical. And it will almost certainly always be my top selling novel courtesy of the Canada Reads Effect. No writer is more grateful or more fortunate than I.

Time flies…

This post is not intended as an anniversary celebration of my debut novel. Rather, it’s more to mark the swift passage of time—and, of course, to concede my extraordinary good fortune. Most days I still feel like I’m early in my career as a writer. But I’m definitely no longer a rookie writer. With novel #10 hitting bookstores in less than six months, I can’t really play the rookie card anymore. As well, I can surely attest to the veracity of the old adage “time flies when you’re having fun.” These last 20 years since sitting down to try to write my first novel, have been the happiest of my life. I may have started writing later in life than most writers, but I’m still working hard to make up for lost time.

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A timely message from a reader…

I’m finishing this post today, Monday, April 21 and it’s scheduled to be published this Sunday, April 27, 2025. Early this morning, at 12:35 a.m. to be precise, a reader sent me the following note on Facebook Messenger. If you’re wondering why writers write, this timely message from a reader about my debut novel, The Best Laid Plans, provides a most compelling explanation.

I’m always grateful to hear from readers, but this special note delivers a broader message about the power of prose, the force of fiction, to affect readers’ lives. If you’d told me twenty years ago—as I stumbled around in the dark writing The Best Laid Plans—that in 2025, a reader would share that he and his father were both inspired to stand for election partly due to my debut novel, I’d have suggested you’d taken leave of our senses.

It’s been an extraordinary two decades of writing, with much more to come.

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Wrapping up…

As always, thanks for checking this out. Here’s hoping you’ll subscribe—if you haven’t already. It’s free and easy, and you won’t miss any future posts. See you in two weeks.