If you're trying to finish writing the first draft of a book, the first thing you must do is prepare yourself mentally. This means accepting three accept three things:
It won’t be the novel you have in your head.
It will be the worst novel anyone has ever written.
You can fix items 1 and 2 in the subsequent drafts.
It’s easy to give up an idea when it looks like everything is going horribly. It’s easy to fall out of love with an idea when all the things you thought you loved about it aren’t showing up on the page.
But let me tell you, this happens with so many books. They don’t pop out perfectly formed. To use an overwrought metaphor, if books were sculptures, writing the first draft would be mining the marble. You can chisel it down to that beautiful work of art later, but first you need to gather the raw material to work with.
It probably won’t be pretty. It’ll be a great lump of words that may or may not form a coherent story. But that thing you want desperately? that story you can see so clearly inside your head? It will be in there somewhere.
MAKE YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE
It would be great if all writing a novel took was a strike of inspiration that could carry you over all 50k+ words. But for the majority of us, this isn’t the case.
Your inspiration, your love of the idea alone, will not get you through this.
It’s going to take blood and sweat and an astounding amount of perseverance.
What will help more than any muse is accountability. A sense of responsibility and urgency to get this novel finished.
Most of us need stakes and consequences. We need to be held accountable. This can take many forms. If you’re good at self motivation, you can hold yourself accountable. Make a plan of what you need to do to get the draft out, and hold yourself to it.
If you need some external accountability, tell a friend your goals and send your work to them on a schedule. Join a writing group. Take part in NaNoWriMo. Tweet your goals and daily word counts.
I’m in a writing master’s program. If I don’t write for weeks, I don’t have work to turn in to my manuscript tutor and that’s an unpleasant place for me to be. If I don’t write for months, I fail my course. As motivation goes, it can be stressful, but it helps me get words on the page.
START NOW
Do you want to write a novel? Right now. As you read this. Do you actually want to write a novel? If that answer is yes, start right now... or, you know, after you finish reading this post.
There are always going to be reasons why this, right now, is a Bad Time for you start. You have things to do, places to go, people to see. You have obligations and responsibilities. Life tip? That is never going to go away. It will always be a Bad Time to sit down and write a book.
I’m a very slow writer, but I can train myself to write 800 words in 20 minutes if I want. If I wrote for 20 minutes every day, I could write a draft of a 50k novel in two months. That’s the same amount of time as the commercial breaks in an hour long tv show. If I watched an hour long tv show once a day and wrote during the commercials, I could write a 50k draft in two months.
That’s nothing at all.
I promise you, you have everything you need to sit down and start writing this very second. You have enough spare time in your day to finish a draft in a matter of months.
If you really want to write that novel, there are no excuses. Start now.
KEEP GOING
Remember how I told you that the first thing you have to do is prepare yourself mentally? Those are things you have to continually remind yourself as you write.
It’s not going to be the novel in your head.
It’s going to be the worst novel anyone has ever written.
You’re going to have to accept these two horrible sentences as facts and keep going.
At points, you’re going to hate your story. It’s going to be the very last thing you’ll want to waste your time on.
That’s fine. Believe it or not, that’s natural.
Keep going.
You’re going to want to change it. You might have a new idea for the beginning. You might decide on a new name for the main character halfway through. You might switch from past to present tense randomly.
Those are all things you can fix in the second draft.
Keep going.
Your first draft doesn’t need to be coherent. It doesn’t need to be good. It just needs to be.
You’re not trying to write the best novel ever. You’re not trying to write a good novel. Again, those are for the subsequent drafts.
Now, your only goal is to reach the words: “The End.”
Do whatever it takes to get to them.
TIPS
Keep a notebook of ideas for revisions next to you while you write to help fight against the urge to go back and change things as you write.
Use writeordie.com to kickstart your word count and writing speed if you’re having trouble getting things on the page.