Five Things I've Learned While Writing My First Novel

For the last eleven months, I have been working on a novel. I’ve been calling it my first, but the truth is, it’s more like a fifth or sixth. Many times, especially in the past three years, I have attempted to write a book. Each ended the same way—pushed aside “for later” and then eventually abandoned altogether. This time, though, I forced myself to the finish line. I’m taking a short break to clear my head, and then it will be finally time to embark on the lovely journey of editing (also known as: tearing my writing to pieces, shoving it through a thousand filters, and seeing what’s left at the end).

Throughout this process, I’ve learned quite a bit, and though I’m by far from being an expert, I thought I’d share some of that knowledge. I present to you the five things I’ve learned while writing my first novel.

It’s not going to turn out like how you originally plan. Before I started this novel, I had two ideas—two completely separate ideas that had nothing to do with each other, and each only one sentence long. I decided at one point, “hey, I’m never going to get around to writing both of these, and they’re too simple,” and so I fused them together. If you read those two sentences and then the completed book, though, you might see a tiny bit of resemblance, but in truth they are only minor features now that barely matter to the story anymore. As I progressed, I added more and more detail to my plan, but those details were always appearing, evolving, or being scrapped altogether. I never stuck to much of a real outline—the story just happened on its own. I was pretty scared of letting go of the reins, as someone who rigidly plans out every aspect of my life, but it worked out for the better.

It’s okay to take some time to think. My original writing plan was to write a thousand words or more every day, no excuses. This, of course, fell to ruins after day one. It was due in part to my schedule as a student—unfortunately, writing isn’t my full-time job yet—but also because of writer’s block. I would try to start the next chapter, but I wasn’t one hundred or even ninety percent sure of what I wanted to happen yet. Eventually, I decided I would use my “busy days” as time to think instead of write, time to gain inspiration from the outside world for what I could write about next. During those days, I still tried to write something—a short story, an essay for school, a poem, anything—to gain some extra practice. Writing every day is extremely important to me, even if it is work on a few separate projects.

Wait until you are finished with the first draft to go back and revise. There was a period in June when I was about halfway to where I am now with the novel, and I decided that it was probably a good idea to go back and make sure there were no huge mistakes or plot holes before I continued on with the story. Bad idea. All this did was hurt my confidence. Sure, I got some of the tedious grammar-correcting and typo-fixing out of the way, but picking apart my writing like that before it was finished made me want to quit. The story wasn’t yet going in the direction I wanted it to go, there were subplots I hadn’t tied up, the writing style I had chosen was starting to annoy me…everything seemed like it was headed for the dumps, and I didn’t feel like working on it anymore. Fortunately, it was only about thirty-five thousand words long at this point and I got through the editing fairly quickly. I realized by the end of it that no matter how awful it seemed, I had to keep going, because I still had some good ideas that I hadn’t put into play yet.

Write whatever you want. Countless times throughout this process, I have questioned many aspects of my story, saying things like “but no one puts stuff like this in a novel” or “this is too weird.” The truth is, though, anything can be in a novel. If you’ve never seen something in a book before, great. Write it. There’s a first for everything. If you think it’s weird, even better. Go for it. Staying safe is not what makes a good story. You need good characters, a good plot, and good writing—but no one is there to tell you what constitutes “good.” You have to take some risks. Make it a book that you would enjoy—you’re the first reader, after all.

Don’t quit, no matter how much you want to. The first real novel I tried to write ended after sixty pages when I realized the story was too similar to the rest of the YA genre. Instead of trying to make it different, and better, I quit. Another one, my second attempt at YA, lasted through one and a half handwritten composition books before deciding that it was too strange. In both of these cases, I had told myself that I would finish them. So, when I started this one back in February, I was terrified that it would meet the same fate. I think it was actually this fear that pushed me through, though—there were points at which I didn’t even care how it turned out; I just wanted it so badly to be finished and not trashed like everything else. 

And now, well, I guess my wish came true. Perseverance and trust in myself has brought me to the end of this epic journey, and from here I can only go forward.

As of today, I have a sixty-eight thousand-word rough draft, which is twenty thousand more words than I thought I’d end up with. So far, I’ve done one quick edit on my own, and I’ve handed it off to a few friends for critiques and suggestions (be mean to me, guys) before I begin a real second draft.

When will it be published? Who knows. That’s a whole other adventure.