How not to lose a novel in 10 days

From the time of stone age, we as humans have wanted to tell our story. We started scribbling in caves, hoping that a piece of us will be immortal. Thousands of years later, caves have transitioned into machine cut papers and scribblings have turned into digital codes. No matter where you are from, even if you are not a writer, you want to tell your story. It is within each one of us to leave behind something that outlasts our mortal shells. Ever wanted to write down your story but gave up? Ever found a brilliant idea hovering in the air only to be fizzled out? Read on to find out how not to lose a novel in 10 days.

Plenty of fishes

Stan lee had an idea for making a hero that people would hate. He wanted the superhero to be eccentric, selfish and force people to like the character. He came up with Iron Man. We often wonder if our story is good enough. What if people make fun of my story? Children’s toys as main characters? A fish suffering from short term memory loss? A conversation between 12 angry men? A small halfling carring a ring around the world? Never discredit your small tiny world for being not good enough. You are good enough and so is your story. Write it. Celebrate it. Never throw it in a garbage bin saying that it doesn’t scale up to the Grisha-verse or the GoT lore. The very essence of writing is to tell your story the way only YOU can tell. A person reading your book will find your characters falling flat if you are not confident in your idea.

You want your main characters to have an epic battle sequence in the middle of an active volcano that is being shut down by an artificial magnet? That sounds insane. It might not work if you want to dethrone a New York best seller from the same genre. It will work as good if not even better if you want to be a part of that battle instead of writing it for the sake of huge set peices. You want to write about the first gay star fighter in the galaxy? Go for it. Don’t ever step down and say, ‘well people might not want to read it.’ Maybe there is someone out there, terrified of being a pilot and then gets inspired by your book! There is plenty of fish in the sea (numbers of actual fishes are dwindling because of sea pollution but here we are.) and there are plenty of people who would like reading your story. More than you think. Write your slightly weird and fantastic story before you get rid of it!

A stitch in time

Now you have the courage to write your story. You figure that if you write one chapter a day, you can finish it by the end of the month and voila! You would have a book. Well, I so wish that was the case. I have seen many people worry about their word counts, their productivity cap for the day and even typing speed. Geek out all you want but for someone new, this could be overwhelming. Am I typing too fast? Am I typing too slow? Can I reach today’s word count? Will there be enough words in the tank for me to get through this chapter? Relax. You are building a world, not a lego set.

I am all for the stats but a wise man once said “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” That wise man is Mark Wahlberg in the movie Shooter. It has stuck with me ever since. Supposing your daily word count target is 4000 words. You made it work the first day. The second day. All the way through the month. Now you have, 120K words at your disposal to revise. Do you think all of those 120K words are going to make it in the final cut? No.

Your revised novel might come around 90K words. On average, it comes around 3000 words per day. In reality, you have been writing 1000 extra words per day that never makes it to the final cut. All that time and stress is to hit the word count. I am not a seasoned writer, but I can tell you that we hardly have four hours of good writing in us each day. Why spend it with a target in mind? Be smooth. Write as much as you want because by the end of the day, you would have written more words on average than you think. Since you are writing stress free and taking your time, 95% of words that you write will end up in your final draft. To gift wrap it with a bow, you will finish your novel way faster than your word count goal.

If you are someone who is very particular about word counts and typing speeds, go for it! We are only efficient in the methods we love.

A bird in hand

Many people write multiple stories at once. Some take ten years to complete one book. There is no ultimatum to how many books one should write simultaneously. However, I do believe that each book consumes a part of you in exchange of being immortal. Everytime you write a sentence, a part of you drools out into the pages. Most of us have full time jobs and it can be incredibly difficult to manage multiple projects. There IS a limit to how many words a person can churn out while still maintaining their social, personal lives. Having said that, writing one book at a time seems to be the logical play. The last thing you want to do is take up multiple ideas and never finish any of them.

It can be tempting to write all three books of the trilogy of your crime fiction. You might even be in love with how the story weaves in and out of these seperate books. The hard fact is that there is not going to be a sequel if the first book is only a slice from the whole pizza. When you write your first book, or any book for that matter, go all out. Hoarding your big story moments because you want it to be in a second book is too risky. Take your story by the jugular and make sure that it is the best book ever in the series. Consider this, in case you have exhausted all your imagination in your first book, even the reader is going to be rather intrigued when your second book comes out. They might want to read the second book simply to figure out how did you even manage to continue the quest after you turned the main character into a tree! A sequel, trilogy, series can all wait. Focus on what’s in your hand at the moment, put in all the chaos and beauty that it deserves, hold nothing back.

As you sow

Every writer has anxiety. It is an occupational hazard that we chose. A daredevil lifestyle of constant rejection and failure. An alarm clock that keeps eating away precious youth while we sit behind a computer hoping that one day the world will see what you had written. “Will I get published”? – may not be the only question in your mind but certainly the one that takes a toll on you. As writers, we often forget the reason why we started writing in the first place. It was not the fame, money or even the attention, it was joy of having something in this world that is entirely made by you. From the start to the finish.

The Director of “Queens Gambit” Mr. Alan Scott tried for 30 years to get his show up and running. 30 years! Writing is not a one night stand, it is marriage. And like all relationships, you need to be patient. Your novel will take care of itself as long as you are willing to take care of yourself. Life is meant to be lived and we often make our dreams larger than our lives. You need to work hard, yes. Your passion will drive you to work hard, no doubt about that. You need to believe that you have the legs for it. Maybe you got rejected this time. Fine. No big deal. Perhaps next time you might be shown the door. Again, no big deal. A rejection letter from an agent is only an email from a person doing their job. It is not a death sentence. Swipe left and write another one. Cook another epic story. You are damn sure capable of writing more than just one book. Are you going to let this stop you from claiming what is yours? You are a writer! I don’t think you know exactly how powerful that is! You have the power to make people cry and laugh by looking at random words put together. Don’t let an email stop you. Take a deep breath, go for a walk or maybe even do the things that you couldn’t do because you had a WIP.

There are many ways to get published. There are many ways to make money. But there is only one way to write your story. That is with your heart, not with your mind. Anything you make with your heart, will always grow into something.

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I hope that’s everything you needed to know about making your novel last more than 10 days (even decades!) Hope you enjoyed reading as much I enjoyed writing. Let me know in the comments, what are your thoughts? Are you going to start writing? Are you in the querying trenches? Let me know all of that! I would love to see what you guys are up to!

As always, stay safe and stay classy! Meet you in the next one! Cheers!

Disclaimer : All photos used in the blog are attributed to their respective owners.