Creative Writing Tips: How to Write a Novel

This is probably a question many aspiring novelists ask, especially at times of severe writers block. I know I asked it. A few months ago I did lots and lots of searching for the surefire magic formula that would tell me how to get going, how to push through my block, start writing, finish a manuscript and finally have a book written that I could call my own.

And the Result…

Well…Needless to say, there is no such magic formula. Or maybe there is, but it is not exactly what I expected, though it is pretty self explanatory, obvious and a lot easier that you think. And the magic formula is: WRITE! When I first heard this advice, and everyone in the business of giving writing advice will give it, my first thought was, “Yeah, that’s what I want to do, but how?” I was going through a bad block, I hadn’t written anything in over a year, I was completely out of touch with my writing self and here was everyone telling me to just write. So I searched on, read books, read articles, looked far and wide for advice on how to write a novel.

And The Answer…

The answer is still to write, and write everyday. But you need to build up to writing everyday, especially if you’ve just spent if you’ve just spent hundreds of days only thinking about writing. So start small. Start by writing for 15 minutes a day, or set a goal of 500 a day, something manageable. But do it everyday. Without fail and without excuses. After awhile, when you are ready, raise your daily quota and set a goal. An attainable, but rigid goal, and work towards it. It will give you something to work towards and a way to measure you progress effectively.

What to Write About?

Ultimately you are the only one who can answer that question. My experience was such that I first needed to get back into the practice of writing anything at all before I could graduate to writing fiction again. As advised by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Guide to Higher Creativity, and Dorothea Brande before her in Becoming a Writer, I started the practice of writing the so-called Morning Pages. The idea behind these is to start writing as soon as you wake up, when a part of your mind is still in that dream state where stories come from or, in other words, the unconscious. What you do is set an amount to write (Julia Cameron suggests 3 pages) and then start writing as soon as you get up, perhaps even while you are still in bed. You should write these pages without stopping and without editing. Basically, just write anything that comes to mind, and if you think you have nothing to write about then you write that. It really is as simple as that and it will get you into the practice of writing daily, as well as into contact with the part of you mind that is responsible for coming up with story ideas. And eventually those ideas will rise to the surface.

Once they do you should make a separate schedule to write them out. In order to complete a manuscript you must work at it everyday even if just for a little bit. Of course the more you write the more will get written. So set a goal and stick to it. Make sure any excuses you come up with for not writing are 100% valid and non-surmountable. Because the writer’s job is to write. It is not to think about writing, talk about writing or to complain about not being able to write. It is to write. And once you have gone a week or two of writing diligently everyday you will start to wonder how you ever went without. And soon you will have your book finished. It will need editing, but you will have something to work with, something more that just a wish or an idea. Which brings me to the last point I wish to make in this post.

The First Draft…

Many writers are crippled before they even start writing because they think that what they write must be perfect as soon as they put the words on paper. I suffered from this illusion too, thinking that there was no such thing as the first draft with my writing, that everything I wrote was good enough to get published without any rewrites. Well I was wrong, and I am still trying to learn the art of editing and the importance of the second, third or whichever draft. So what I am trying to say is that the first draft can be bad, should be bad, and most likely will be bad. Don’t worry about it. Because no one needs to see it and it is very easy to fix something once you have something to work with, namely the first draft of your manuscript. And you get this manuscript by writing everyday.

Believe me, it is not so hard. Just set a schedule and stick to it and your love of writing will do the rest!

Tagged as: Creative Writing Idea, Creative Writing Ideas, creative writing tips, writing the first draft