The Weirdness of Writing a First Novel: 4 Musings on the Journey to Finish
The past two weeks I’ve been hard at work on the second draft of my first novel, and I’m in a good rhythm. I’ve been writing from 1000-to 1500 words a day 6 days a week. I’m not sure how sustainable that pace is, but for now, I like where I’m headed.
Novel writing has been a unique project for me. I tried once about 10 years ago and gave up. But mostly I have never worked on something quite this big. Usually, I work in poetry, short stories, blog posts, or articles for magazines or websites, but I have avoided novel writing because frankly, the length of the work terrified me. I think the longest piece I ever wrote was for grad school, which I believe was about 100 pages. This will be 2–3 times that size. But unlike my other attempt at writing a novel, I don’t see myself giving up. The reason? Here are 4 things that have helped me stay focused.
- Managing Expectations
Managing expectations has been by far the most important part of novel writing thus far. I constantly have to remind myself that this will not be Dostoyevsky or even that very good at least initially. Or to put it another way, during my first draft, I have to keep forgiving myself for sometimes being a mediocre or bad writer. My first draft was a kitchen sink draft! I threw everything at the wall. Some…
