What Writing a Novel Has Taught Me

So, I’m debating squishing the Chronos pot. I may just be taking a break from it. But here’s what my work on it has taught me so far.

1. PLAN, PLAN, PLAN! — Yeah, definitely number one. I spent about 2-3 months planning Chronos. I planned characters, but not well enough. I planned out my system of time travel pretty extensively, so that wasn’t a problem, but I didn’t iron out the problems I could see in the plot. I just got sick of planning and started writing. I felt like I could get stuck in directionless planning forever. When I began I didn’t even have a concrete setting. A lot of the world specific phrases like Declare and Punishers just came out on the fly. During the first several chapters I invented wildly, and would often wait a week or more between chapters while I tried to think of what should come next. By the time I got to the middle, I had a good idea of how it would all end, but that meant the beginning was a lot of mucking about trying to figure where to go, which is how it reads. So now I have 130,000 words, and they aren’t very succinct. 2 things would have helped: 1. Have a set method for planning, and 2. workshop my planning in my (awesome!!) writing group. I was so stuck on surprising everyone, I wouldn’t get help with my big picture. For my next venture, I will not only use a more pointed method of planning, I will also ask my writing group to help me find the problems with it BEFORE I write the book. Not after, which is what’s happening now…   

2. The Daffodil Principle — Ah, yes, the principle by which to govern your entire life. Another way of saying this would be “all things in moderation,” but that’s so Biblical. The Daffodil Principle is the story of a twenty-something who is driving and finds a huge field of daffodils planted in swirls of different colors and varieties, a mosaic of yellows and oranges and whites on a hillside. She learns that an old woman in a shack planted them. When asked how, the old woman says, “One at a time. Everyday for 60 years I planted 2 or 3 daffodils on that hill. Now look what I’ve made.” Ok, so I butchered that story, but you (hopefully) get the idea. I started with the goal to just write 100 words a day. At first they didn’t have to be on the same project, and they didn’t have to meet any quality standards. They just had to be 100 words of creative (non-blog) writing a day. Eventually I started averaging several hundred. In my heyday I was up to 1000 words a day. Trying to write a novel all at once is both daunting and impossible. But breaking it up into manageable chunks allows you to eat the whale one bite at a time (another saying with the same idea). Anyway, now I try to balance my efforts: I could stay up all night every night and try to finish the book in a month, or I could be content to plant a daffodil everyday and know that, in a few months, I will have a beautiful garden.

3. Readers will notice the inconsistencies. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. — Pretty self-explanatory. There were problems with some of my character motivations and some of the workings of my world, and even though I recognized them, I really thought no one  would notice. Duh! My first readers noticed right away. And so will yours. So threat them like the intelligent audience they are.

4. Keep several irons in the fire. – Sometimes I get writer’s block. A lot, actually. (Dan Wells says this means what you are writing is not necessary to the story and might need to be cut…) While writing Chronos I came up with the ideas for 5 other books and wrote numerous short stories. I used to jot down the ideas, then force myself to work on Chronos, the alleged task at hand. I now think it’s great to take a break from what’s not working, just to take a step back, get the juices flowing again, and most of all, stay excited about writing. As soon as writing is a chore you won’t write well, if at all. I now work on a short story whenever an idea strikes, and I’m working on getting some published in hopes of joining the SFWA. (More to come on this topic…)

I know as I keep writing I will continue to learn, and hopefully my writing will improve. I’m also learning from editing, but right now that’s mostly frustration, so I think I’ll wait to pontificate on that.

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