Hey up! I promised I’m make a fresh bout of writing advice, didn’t I?

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been very busy writing up my own novel and partaking in an online writing course to fudge any new entries for this blog. I hope my absence hasn’t deprived you of much – it’s not like what I write is especially novel, is it? Well, either way, I’m not going to miss another saturday update. That’d just be slovenly.

Overplanning – a vicious cycle of death, rebirth and stagnation

Doing plenty of preliminary planning for your novel will always be beneficial for giving your writing consistent form and enabling it to be truly unique, but it can be very easy to fall into a state of “plancrastination”. Actually getting around to write your novel can be disconcerting, since this involves actually creating the product you promised to. Some people, like myself, place excessively idealised standards about their script and thus fuss about immensely when it doesn’t at all compare – so they delete everything and slink back to planning!

Eventually, however, you develop a special kind of writing block where you can only plan – writing out admittedly awesome concepts and characters for your story that ultimately don’t come to anything because you never really write them. You let your story become one big daydream; a pleasant, albeit distant thought that is unlikely to become a reality because you don’t work towards it. This can be the death of your novel concept. If you put it off so long that you become bored of it and haven’t archived it in any way, that’s your idea subdued – possibly to never resurface again out of shame. You might then move onto another idea, a fresh one with a new hope for fruition, but if you do not dare to venture out to make a product out of your ideas, the same thing will happen again!

Now, I decided to do a little research into writing failure to scare you all (because I’m horrible) and I found a rather interesting albeit harrowing blog post by Author Leliane Stuart (2022) where she found that:

“Out of ninety seven percent of people who begin writing a novel: thirty out of 1000 go on to finish it.”

That is probably the least reassuring thing I’ve posted so far, unless you see it as a sign that you are not alone in your suffering. I should probably cite more actual essays and sources like this in the future of my blog, since I haven’t been very professional before, but that’ll have to wait for a less busy time. Besides, it’s time to discuss how you can mitigate discouragement at the very beginning of your novel – keeping your head up in the “valley of despair” in the middle will have to wait for another time (when I’ve gotten more professional)

How to actually get started with your novel and keep going

Sometimes, you’ve just got to get on with what matters. Writing might become quite ugly and slimey to deal with, like say a frog, but you’ve got to get out your way and eat it. For that, you might need a good deal of self discipline. Since I’ve brought it up, if you’re about to begin your first novel or between novels, I would recommend reading Brian Tracy’s various advice books, including the eponymous “Eat that frog!” (2001). They will absolutely help you build up resistance to reluctance and construct a good strategy to work on your novel. However, since I’ve rambled enough this post, I’m afraid I don’t have the time to summarise any of his points – instead, I’m going to offer some of my own.

A good exercise to de-activate your yapping inner criticsm is to practise something that is called “Freewriting” on a daily basis. This is the activity proposed by Peter Elbow (1973) and it involves just writing non-stop for a short but very intense period of time – no looking back, no correcting spelling mistakes, not even taking too much care with legibility. You just write what comes to mind, preferably if it’s related to a prompt or your piece, then file it away. Do not throw it away! This is so you can come back to it at a later date and pick out ingenious ideas that your unconscious mind (Remember? From my first advice piece?) has been able to generate.

Getting into the habit of freewriting allows you to switch off your inner critic when it’s not needed – that is for the entirety of the first draft, preferably. You learn to just keep writing what works for you and thus turn your ideas into something that resembles a story before you can refine it into something impressive – it’s managing the whole thing in easy stages, rather than continuosly worrying about the whole thing!

If you ask me, you ought to begin writing your novel early – again, some pre-liminary planning might be helpful, but remember that the more you do, the more addictive it becomes. As soon as you come up with a protagonist with a motivation and an initial setting, you should just write without looking back for a whole chapter. Again, let your subconscious mind add characters to the scene and refine the personality of your protagonist. Wing it. Once you’ve gotten to a point where the scene changes and a new potential chapter begins, you look back at what you’ve made…then you base your plans in future around it! Make it a regular cycle of writing something, looking at what you’ve thrown together and developing it a little behind the scenes. Plan at most for about 4 days between chapters, then force yourself to write another scene to prevent stagnation. If you’re consistent, you’ll find it easier to be productive. You’ll gain momentum very quickly until you’re very hard to stop. Balance this with the odd freewriting session to churn out new ideas and you’ve got a comfortable writing arrangement that’ll keep you slick and determined. It works for me!

But what works for me might not work for you, keep in mind. My advice is a good place to start, but do not feel afraid to reach out and do some experimentation yourself. Again, this is best done early novel planning – at most, you should only plan for about four weeks max before you begin. Sadly, it hasn’t taken me four weeks to churn out all the writing advice I can think of for beggining your novel, but that’s why you ought to broaden your sources. Leliane Stuart has a blog on WordPress with far superior advice to mine since she’s a published author – as a veteran, she’s also got much more advice available too! Look for all the help you can get, but don’t outstay your welcome planning.

Anyway, that’s enough advice for the day. Are any of you having problems
getting started with a dream novel projects – are they staying dreams and not
actualities? If you’re not too busy, let me know!

Have a good saturday – do something fun! But don’t give up on your writing.

(PS there was a powercut as I wrote that last line. Thank god I was using a
laptop, eh?)