I wrote a novel and it’s not that hard. Don’t believe me? Well, I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there and I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel…oh, wait, side-tracked. The writers curse.
Writers seem to have a lot of curses. The main secret to success is figuring out which ones you have and how to sidestep them. I can’t tell you that. That is as personal and individual to you as your fingerprints. I can tell you about my curses and how I sidestepped them – maybe that will help you get started.
I have an unfair advantage. I have been a writer all my life. Short stories and funny anecdotes written in school grew to articles and blog pieces that paid the rent for quite a few years. You want 500 words on glass splashbacks – boom. Need your website sprucing up – I’m your gal. I had multiple clients whom I wrote thousands upon thousands of words for on a regular basis… And I hated it.
I could call myself a writer, but I wanted to call myself an author. The fact that I could never keep hold of my enthusiasm for a story long enough to write more than a few thousand words really frustrated me. So I turned all my blog/article writing research skills into finding out why. I researched for about a year, took everything I learnt and wrote a self-help book on how to write a book
, which I self-published on amazon and briefly felt the thrill of being an author. However, it wasn’t quite what I wanted and it still took me another two years to follow any of my own advice and write a fiction novel.
There is something else you should know about me. I have suffered with depression since I was around 11 years old. There are reasons and I will happily discuss them but not in this blog. It comes in devastating waves. I have gone years without it and years with it. When a wave hits it takes all my energy, will and enthusiasm away with it and I am sometimes struggling for months to get back on my feet.
So, how did I actually get around to writing my first fiction novel? Two things. Firstly I got a job in a restaurant and I stopped writing for other people. Completely. I was using all my energy writing things that sapped my soul dry and so I stopped.
Secondly, I didn’t give my writing value. I made it something as normal as brushing my teeth. I didn’t set aside a special time for it. I shoehorned writing into my every day, scribbling away in the car waiting for the school gates to open, in the seating area while my kids did gymnastics, in the café whilst I sipped my tea. I gave it no special standing, no importance, no weight so that generally when a wave hit it didn’t take the writing with it.
Stephen King says there are two types of writers – planners (who plan out every detail before putting pen to paper) and pantsers (who have absolutely no idea where a story is going until they have written it). I am most definitely the latter. I tried being a planner and got so thoroughly bored of the story before I even began writing that they never got birthed.
That is the other thing – writing can be boring. Yes,
there are times when your pen is flying across the page or your fingers are a blur on the keyboard, your soul is on fire and you have never felt more alive. But, the majority of the time getting what is in your head onto paper in any meaningful way is just plain dull and monotonous. Knowing this is normal is incredibly helpful to getting you past the urge to quit.
Being a planner or a panster is not set in stone. You can swap and change and even be a bit of both. There is no right or wrong way. Whatever works for you, works!
I created my characters as an amalgamation of people I know. This helped me remember them. I then just wrote whatever “scene” was playing on my mind. I didn’t read anything back until the end. I didn’t edit. I didn’t plan. I had a rough idea on a general direction on where I wanted to go but I let the story get there naturally. It took just over a year to finish writing and I wove my childhood into it. The people I know. The people I miss. The experiences I had that shaped me. Which sounds odd for a supernatural thriller, murder mystery!
You want to know which bits are real and which are fiction?
Maybe next time…
