I finished the first draft of my 300-page novel in six months. I’m just a regular person. Therefore, if I can do it, you can do too.
Want to start—and finish—writing your novel in just six months? Here’s the process you need to do it. Whether you like to outline every last detail of your novel before you start writing or prefer to fly by the seat of your pants and discover the story as you go, these five steps will set you up for novel-writing success.
Over the next month, there is one rule I want you to keep as the foundation of everything you do during the month of November: Write it anyway.
I know how difficult this is. The inner critic gets vicious during NaNoWriMo, especially right around the middle of the month.
But your inner critic is a jerk. You can’t listen to it because the inner critic’s goal is not to make you a better writer. Your inner critic is trying to get you to quit.
Don’t quit. Write it anyway.
Ever had one of those weeks? The kind of week where life boils over, and even if you have time to sit down and write, you don’t have a lot of writing to give.
Sometimes, life goes nuts; when it does, it’s harder to write.
You’ve got nothing. No characters talking, no plot points singing. Your story seems dumb, your twist ending feels predictable, and you suddenly wish you’d never told anybody you were going to write because it’s gonna be humiliating when you fail.
We all have weeks like that—I know I do—and so today, I’m going to give you three steps to work through those troubled times when you can’t write at all.
A few months ago, I accepted a challenge to finish my book by September 2. The challenge came with stakes. If I missed my deadline, I had to give $1,000 to the presidential candidate I despise the most.
You’re probably wondering, “Did you succeed? Or did you have to send that $1,000 check to that presidential candidate you hate most?”
By the way, you can read all the updates from my Book Deadline Challenge here.
So here’s the news on my deadline…
Let’s be honest. There is no such thing as Writer’s Block.
This is a phrase that we use to describe the frustrating experience of wishing to write without being able to. But there’s no such thing. We say that we have this thing called “writer’s block” and it’s the reason why we’ll never achieve our dreams. As if it’s a contracted disease. But it doesn’t exist.
What we are experiencing is the self-inflicted phenomenon of writers making choices that frequently lead to failure. And knowing that writer’s block is a myth is exactly what you need to beat it.
English is so weird.
No, really. We only have 26 letters and a hodgepodge vocabulary that seems to make fun of itself. We use insane spelling and restrictive grammar that make no logical sense. I once heard the joke that English doesn’t “borrow” from other languages; it follows them into dark alleys, knocks them out, and takes their wallets.
Yet somehow, we use this cockamamie language to create beauty and power, to communicate multi-layered concepts and share one another’s lives. We use our broken, Frankensteinian tongue to reshape entire world views, to give hope, and to create empathy. That’s why, in spite of its flaws, I love it.
If you’re going to be a writer, you need to learn to love it, too—even when it drives you crazy.
