Very few people in the world can write a book. The idea that everyone has at least one good book inside them is based on wishful thinking. Writing a book is hard work. It’s akin to putting a 100,000 piece puzzle together when there is no picture on the box.
But if you think you’d like to write a book, I’m happy to share the secret of how to do it, right here, right now. I’ve spent a lot of time writing books and I know a thing or two about the process. My first two books are unpublished and I’m getting close to finishing the third and you know what they say about the third time.
The first and hardest step about writing a book is sitting with your butt in a chair for a long time. I would suggest spending at least eight to ten hours a week. I try to sit for two-to-four-hour blocks three or more days a week. When I was younger and still working full time, I got up at 5:00 a.m. each day and wrote for an hour plus reserved my Saturdays for writing. Once you start sitting in your chair on a regular basis, it will take at least one year, if not two or three or more years to finish your book.
You can do all kinds of things in that chair, like think about a story you want to write and who the characters are and what motivates them. You’ll also need to think of what year the story occurs in and what setting. You’ll need to think of a conflict that these people have plus how it will get resolved. Plus determine who is telling the story. And you have to start writing at some point, either in long hand or into your computer.
What you should not do is scroll the internet, answer emails, or clean out your closet during your writing time, which leads to the next requirement. You should carve out dedicated writing time each week and make a place to write. Once you figure out the time in the day that works best for you, don’t schedule anything at that time, even coffee with a friend or a doctor’s appointment. That is your writing time. Then decide where you will write and if you live with other people, tell them what you are doing. My husband knows that when I am at my desk to not distract me by talking to the dogs who sleep on my couch when I write. He also knows that this is not the time to sing me a silly song. I am working. If there is no place in your house to write without distraction, then go to a coffeehouse or library or wherever you can think without interruption.
Your next big goal is to finish a shitty first draft. That is the industry term for writing what comes to you and not stopping to fix spelling or grammatical errors or even fixing the names of people when you forget them. Some writers write everything in dialogue first, some just write the main scenes of the story. The amazing thing about writing is that cool thoughts and ideas just come to you while you are writing. Flannery O’Connor said, “I write to discover what I know.” You may set out to write about a woman on her wedding day and then you discover that the minister’s wife knows that somebody in the church plans to stop the wedding. Well, that changes the focus now doesn’t it? Sometimes you write your draft to see what the story is really about. But the point is, you write the whole thing out rather than stopping to make every chapter perfect. You’ll never get the story finished if you do that.
If you plan to write a book, you better take some classes or go to a workshop or do something to learn more about the skill required to be a writer. Just because a person can write a sentence, or even a paragraph, does not mean that they can write a story that people other than their friends and family will read from beginning to end. Some people may argue about this, but it is the hard truth. The foundations of writing can be taught and are best applied to the story you plan to write. Another reason to put yourself out there is to start to build your community of writers. Other writers will understand your efforts and thoughts better than your non-writer friends.
Back to your shitty first draft. Once it’s complete, you need to think about the story you want to write and start the revision and editing process. Editing does not just mean rearranging your sentences and making sure all your punctuation is correct. That kind of editing is called line editing. Line editing looks at ways to tell a story more clearly by cutting out words and vague statements and correcting grammar or spelling issues. Developmental editing is more important and looks at the story itself. Are there characters that are not essential to the story? Is the conflict consistent? Is the story believable, in that you have created a world that seems real, even if people have three heads? Which gets into world building, especially for people that like science fiction and fantasy.
A good book usually has a lot of drafts. Recently, I thought my novel was close to being finished, but the readers I gave it to thought the beginning was lacking. So now I’m looking at ways to change my story around, so that the reader stays interested from the get-go. I’ll finish this new draft and then give it to people to read, get some feedback and then decide what to do next. That’s the writing process.
And here is another thing: just finishing a novel does not mean that it is quality material. Finishing a novel means that you have successfully kept your butt in a chair for a few years. And that is really something, because it means you have faced yourself, your doubts, your days of crappy writing, plus wrangled up your will power to return to the chair after a few days, a week, a month, or even longer after life has distracted you from writing. And that is amazing, in and of itself.
A first novel is usually around 70-90,000 words or around 350 double spaced pages. If your story is 150,000 words or 600 pages, you most likely have a big problem and need to cut out a lot of stuff. “You have to kill your darlings.” That’s a quote often attributed to William Faulkner, but most likely said by Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1916. It means that just because you really like a character or scene, it might have to go if it doesn’t serve a purpose in your story.
If writing a book is so hard, why do it? Because there are days when everything comes together, when the words seem to really flow and your endorphins are bursting out of control. Translation: you feel a happiness and glee like no other. And once you cross that halfway point, there is no turning back, just like working on a puzzle. When the end is in sight, you just have to keep going.
