Writing a Novel
A reader, N., wrote that she had finished an outline for a novel, and wondered what next steps to take. I am no expert, just another writer trying to get published. Writing, I suspect, is like just about everything else on the planet. Every person does it differently and has different things that help, or hinder.
I started the manuscript I sent out during National Novel Writing Month in 2002. NaNoWriMo is a contest of sorts, in which writers are challenged to churn out a 50K manuscript in 30 days. Nothing matters except word count. NaNoWriMo was useful for me because I’m terrible at finishing things, so I thrive on arbitrary deadlines (see my book and movie challenges.) I picked a topic, created some characters, and started typing. No outline. No plan. Just a vague idea and a crazy-ass deadline.
After I had the 50K rough draft from NaNoWriMo, I took classes at the Loft Literary Center. I took 3 classes (the same one twice) and got a new draft out of each. The current draft is, I think, the seventh one. The manuscript changed significantly with each draft.
National Novel Writing Month is one way to write a novel. It worked for me in 2002. It did not work for me in 2004. I wrote 50K, but so far I have yet to turn those 50K words into a useable manuscript. Another option is to take classes at the Loft Literary Center. I recommend the longer classes rather than the shorter workshops, since the signal to noise ratio is better. Still another piece of advice I’ve found helpful came from local writer, Kate DiCamillo, who writes 2 pages a day. She says it’s good not only for getting writing done, but also for working through writer’s block.
For more ideas, consult any book on writing. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is useful, if only for the assurance that there’s someone crazier than me out there. Some people swear by Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, others by Stephen King’s On Writing, others still by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I recommend checking writing books out of the library rather than purchasing, since what works is so individual. Finally, for any person juggling novel writing and motherhood, I found this helpful (previously noted here):
My advice for young women writers is just do it. Don’t wait for some ideal point in your life when you will finally have “time to write.” No sane person ever has time to write. Don’t clean the bathroom, don’t paint the hall. Write. Claim your time. And remember that a writer is a person who is writing, not a person who is publishing. If you are serious about it, you will realize early on that (particularly if you expect to have children) you can’t take on a high-power career in addition to writing. You probably can’t be a surgeon, and have children, and “write on the side.” (On the other hand, you could marry a surgeon, thereby solving the whole problem.)–Lee Smith