Your First Novel
The definition of a novel, according to Wikipedia, is a fifty-thousand word story. Seems daunting, huh? Let’s put it in terms we can actually chew on: fifty-thousand is roughly two hundred pages in Microsoft Word, double spaced, or one hundred pages single spaced. It doesn’t really seem like a lot when you put it down in those terms, does it?
Actually, it is a lot – especially when you are writing your first novel ever. It was the biggest challenge I went through as a writer, and I’ll now explain to you how it was so important for me to overcome it.
Writing a novel is like crossing a mountain – at least that’s how I described writing my first ”proper” novel, “The Demons of Draco Drim”. Sadly, a lot of writers fail before they even get close to the summit. From my own experience, I blame this on a lack of self confidence, a lack of motivation and a lack of concentration skills. A lot of people abandon stories due to writers’ block only after starting them. Writers’ block is caused by real life stresses getting in the way. Due to the fact that the causes vary greatly from person to person, it is a problem everyone has to overcome for themselves.
What you need to do is get used to writing the novel you’ve chosen every single day. It doesn’t matter if it’s a paragraph or a line – just get used to doing it. Often times, people find it best if they write in certain places – such as a favourite room, or in a café or library. This all depends upon you. Committing yourself to finishing the story is in fact the hardest part.
Like I said, writing a novel is like crossing a mountain. It is an uphill struggle at first. Once you reach the peak, however, going on is pretty much simple. I define this ”peak” as the point where the writer realises that it’s almost over. He’s half way or more through the novel, and he knows that the hardest part of the process is behind him.
With “Draco Drim”, I realised at the ”peak” that the story was rubbish. The plot was cheesy and clichéd, the characters were two dimensional. If I ever got it published (heaven help us), it would attract an ”anti-fanbase” five times the size of the ”anti-Inheritance” and ”anti-Twilight” groups put together. Given that it was clearly so dreadful, why did I not abandon it?
The answer to that is simple: I wanted to show myself that I could finish a novel – and I did. After I finished it, I knew that I had the confidence and the ability to write a manuscript from start to finish. Even now, almost a year on, I can remember hysterically hugging my parents and sending excited IMs to all my online friends. The pride and joy I felt at that point was enough to make it worthwhile for me.
It was a huge milestone to cross, and now that I’m gradually reaching the end of the draft of my current novel, “Earldust”, I realise the huge benefit that experience was to me. Draco Drim took well over a year to write, and ended up being just over fifty-three thousand words.
On the other hand, I’ve gotten to that length with Earldust in about six months, and I’m still writing! Simply having the confidence of knowing that I did it before is such a huge help in sticking with it. Once you’ve done it before, you can do it again – only better.
To some it all up, I firmly believe that finishing a novel, no matter how clichéd, derivative or generally badly written it is, is a hugely important step to maturing as a writer. The thrill of finishing it and the boost to your self esteem really makes it worth it. Just write whatever story you feel like telling, and don’t worry about how good or bad it is. Afterwards, you’ll realise it was worth it.
As always, everything written here is to be taken as opinion and not fact. You can feel free to agree or disagree with it as you wish. It should, however, provide you with food for thought.
Thanks for this, Fiachra. It really helps to know there are others struggling out there like Iam. I have attempted writing one story plot ever since I was thirteen, I know it can make it, but the beginning doesn’t exactly grab the readers. Thanks again.
I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I’m about 100 pages into my first novel and about a third of the way done, but I’ve hit a major confidence crisis and this has me feeling a lot more confident.
I think you hit the nail on the head