How to Write a Book
Part One
Are you looking for One Weird Trick to writing that best-selling novel? Well, look no further, friend! All your answers are right here…
Hahahahaha just kidding. I don’t know how to do that! I’m not sure anyone who writes novels really “knows” how. Even the pros will tell you writing is like grappling with an unseen foe in the fog. The scary truth is that, no matter how many times you might have done it before, every book is a new and different mountain, and you have to start climbing from the bottom every single time. However, now that I have climbed a whole bunch of them (yes, only one published so far, but that’s not stopping me!), I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned along the way, so here is Part One of a short series of things I’ve learned as a writer, while grappling in the fog:
No. 1 - It Should Be Fun
When I first started writing novels, I didn’t know anything—I’d studied poetry and film at university, not long fiction—so I just threw myself at an idea without really knowing it was a book until I had tens of thousands of words down where Stuff Happened. In the meantime, I was reading constantly, studying the novels I liked, pulling them apart and trying to figure out how they “worked.”
And the first book I wrote was good-ish. I was proud of it, but it wasn’t publishable. For one thing, it had bloomed into an ungainly trilogy, so actually I’d written two and a half novels at this point, but by the time I got to the final book in the series, I was bored out of my mind and hated my characters. I wasn’t having fun anymore, and I needed a break.
*My second favourite review of all time.
So, I cleansed my palate by writing a completely different kind of book, one that was so much fun to write, it felt like it fell out of me fully formed. That book was BLACK CHUCK, which got published, won accolades, has been nominated for big awards, and is in its second printing, continuing to sell six years after publication, something I’m very, very, very proud of (*this hilarious review notwithstanding).
And what did I learn by writing that first book / unfinished trilogy? That it’s ok to shelf a project that has you creatively tapped. Shift your energy to something that feels better. Writing should be FUN. Because if you don’t honestly enjoy writing it, will anyone really enjoy reading it?
A room of one’s own.
No. 2 - Writing Under Pressure
That leads me to the next book I wrote, which was, to put it lightly, A Nightmare (sidenote: I started as a pantser - someone who doesn’t plan the whole book out first, but rather writes “by the seat of their pants.” More on this later).
So, there I was, post-BLACK CHUCK, feeling immense pressure to write another successful “good book for Halloween time” in a hurry. And now I had arts grants on the line, a couple of publishers asking about my next book, and the weight of my own ambition on my back. Under all that pressure, I endeavoured to “pants” my way through another dark novel.
Sadly, this also turned out to be the height of Covid, when just existing was stressful, but add to this job stress, family illness and death, personal health changes, two car accidents (I was not the driver in either), and having a surgery that left me both physically and psychologically scarred—not to mention having Covid three times, and all the fatigue, brain fog and barfingly painful migraines that came with it! Clearly, this was the perfect time to write a moody Me Too book with a bleak ending!
That book is now finished, and it is good, but it was haarrrrrdddd to write and it took a huge toll on my mental health. It now needs a re-write, and I have to admit, I’m still a little scared of it.
Lesson learned: Rest is good, burnout is very real, and no book is worth sacrificing your mental health over. So, if you’re under enormous pressure elsewhere in your life, don’t add to it by thinking you need to meet some imaginary “success” deadline. You have all the time in the world to finish your novel, and it’s better to step away from a difficult project than to force yourself through at all cost!
No. 3 - Pantsing vs. Plotting
So, after the Covid Times, obviously my next book had to be F-U-N. And although I’d already written a bunch of novels by this point, this is when my real writing process finally started to take shape—after more than ten years of flinging myself whole-bodily at novels (yeah, I know, nothing done the easy way if I can help it…).
With this book, I was going to intentionally “plot” instead of “pants,” just to see if I could do it. Using the tried-and-true Three Act Arc layout, I wrote detailed notes for each chapter, and lo and behold, when it came to writing, I had no trouble getting it done. Geeze, who knew plotting was actually super helpful!? (Answer: literally every writer who does it!).
Why did I think plotting wasn’t for me? One: the last time I’d tried it, I’d felt creatively stifled, and lost all my zeal for the book. But it was also the third book in that ill-fated trilogy, and in hindsight being bored of the story was the real problem. And two: I’d “pantsed” my way through a now-published and award nominated novel, so I believed I wasn’t inherently a “plotter.”
Lesson learned: Don’t get stuck defining your writing style as one unchanging thing. Starting out, I’d thought the “rule” was that you were EITHER a pantser OR a plotter—but the reality is most writers are a mix of both, and each book is born in its own way (see my note about climbing every mountain from the bottom). Some books can be pantsed, while others need to be plotted. Do what feels right for you, and for the book in front of you, and chances are you’ll create something great.
No. 4 - The Write Software
Keep every idea!
This is sort of a side note, but I have shifted from Word to Scrivener, and it has made a world of difference. Scrivener lets me see the whole book at a glance, chapter by chapter, and makes it super easy to move things around. Yes, I know you can organize Word like this using special functions and whatnot, but Scrivener is just born that way, no special IT knowledge required. It’s also not prohibitively expensive as software goes, and has paid for itself many times over in ease of use and peace of mind. I highly suggest it for novelists!
No. 5 - Be A Magpie
I have piles of notebooks lying around full of ideas, plot points, character names, backstories and more. I also use the Notes function on my phone a LOT (especially at night, when I’m falling asleep, which is often when my chapter openings come to me, for some reason).
I save everything: lists of possible characters for unknown projects; descriptions of people I see that spark story ideas; scenes that float up out of my subconscious, unattached to any book or plot. Not all of it makes sense (one note just says “THE LOST BOYS!!!”), but it all gets saved. It seems excessive maybe, but whole books have bloomed from these notes! So, be a magpie. Save everything. You never know when or where those bits and pieces will become whole stories!
Stay tuned…
I have a lot more to say about writing but nobody has time for long-winded blogs these days, so stay tuned for the rest of the magic beans I want to spill for you in my next post!
I do have a question, though—would you like to see exclusive snippets of works in progress? Bits that won’t be shared anywhere else? I’m contemplating a Patreon or Wattpad style platform to share the stuff I’m working on, but want to know what people think first. It wouldn’t necessarily be a pay wall, but I do like the idea of a members-only area for sharing my half-baked ideas. Let me know what you think via my contact form at the bottom of this page!
photo by Arshad Sutar
Oh, and one last thing: I genuinely love Sabo the Booklover’s review of BLACK CHUCK. It is their honest opinion, and I’m not offended in the slightest. Please don’t troll them, or anyone else, for sharing an honest review! The best thing about writing is that you can’t please everyone (why would you want to?? That book would suck!), but you can (and should) please yourself—and I happen to love Halloween!