Writing A Novel: 10 Top Tips
Writing a novel? Here’s all the help you need from writers like Jeffrey Eugenides, Marian Keyes, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, Joyce Carol Oates and Ernest Hemingway, no less. Oh, and a little extra from us.
1) The way to make time for writing is to steal time from everything else. Don’t answer the phone. Forget the mail. Let the house plants die a lonely death. Call in sick to Thanksgiving and send Christmas cards in January. Don’t fix the toaster. Don’t replace the batteries in anything. Live off the change that has fallen between the sofa cushions. Cultivate kind friends and patient landlords. And when you’ve finally alienated everyone you know, throw a big party and ply them with liquor and food. Play loud music and put tiny umbrellas in everyone’s drinks. When they ask about the book, say: soon, soon. - Jenny Offill, author, in 2004 Writers’ Market.
Font adds: Writing doesn’t happen by itself. You have to make it a priority. What are you prepared to give up to have a published novel in your hand.
2) Stay in touch with the first impulses that made you start writing - the pleasure of it and the interest of the story, and not so much the professional side of things. Remain close to that - when you began writing and were intoxicated with it. If you do, the rest will come, as difficult as that may be. - Jeffrey Eugenides, author, in Writers’ Digest Magazine
Font adds: Spot on Jeffrey! Writing is a noble calling and the closer you stay to the truth of that, the more likely you are to be resilient enough to cope with the ups and downs. Don’t write for money, or publication: write for love.
3) Every writer works differently. I know some writers who know exactly what happens from start to finish in a very short space of time and are able to write a very quick draft. Than they’ll spend a long time polishing and filling out characters. But I don’t like to work like that. I would rather not know what happens next or how it ends. I think it keeps it more interesting for me. And I think if I don’t know what’s going to happen at the end, then, hopefully, the readers won’t know either. - Marian Keyes, author, in Writers’ Digest.
Font adds: Which kind are you? Work it out, then work your way.
4) A writer should leave a day’s work slightly unfinished and at a point where he or she knows something of what will be in the next paragraph, to help facilitate the ease with which the rhythm may be resumed the next day. The descent of the bathysphere, vertically, or the morning trek into the woods, horizontally. The passage from here to there. The practice of staying supple rather than becoming brittle. - Rick Bass, author, from “Why I Write“, .
Font: Couldn’t put it better ourselves!
5) I have always spent most of my time staring out the window, noting what is there, daydreaming, or brooding. Most of the so-called imaginative life is encompassed by these three activities that blend so seamlessly together, not unlike reading the dictionary, as I often do as well, entire mornings can slip by, in a blissful daze of preoccupation. It’s bizarre to me that people think that I am “prolific” and that I must use every spare minute of my time when in fact, as my intimates have always known, I spend most of my time looking out the window. (I recommend it). - Joyce carol Oates, author, in “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art“.
Font adds: Writing is not linear. You need to know which kind of mental doodling feeds your work and which takes you away from it. Note: You know by the feeling in the pit of your stomach as you do it!
6) Discipline is the difference between a wannabe writer and a published one. It’s about sitting down. If I waited for the Muse, I’d be having perdicures every week. - Ayelet Waldman, author (2004 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market).
Font adds: The truest words when it comes to writing. You need to make sacrifices. Huge ones. No t.v, no shopping unless your fridge is empty, no conversing with your neighbours over the garden fence in the morning sun. Sit down to your writing every day and eventually, the good stuff will come. Waiting around for Muses wastes alot of time and talent.
7) I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is that part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. - Ernest Hemingway, author, in “The Paris Review Interviews“.
Font adds: Much of the first draft is spent getting to know what you need to know. Don’t judge it, don’t wonder about it, don’t doubt it: just do it!
8.) There are some things you can do….to minimise the pain [of rejection]. First of all, you can keep involved in the constant production of new work. By focusing your concentration upon the work itself and making the marketing process as mechanical as possible, you can shrug off rejection more easily. This leads to the second method of reducing pain. Keep as many things in the mail as possible. That way when a story comes back it’s not your entire output that’s been rejected but only a very small fraction thereof…. When rejection becomes a routine fact of life, a virtually daily occurence, you get used to it. - Lawrence Block, author, in “Telling Lies for Fun and Profit”
Font adds: Treat rejection as an opportunity for revision or redirection. Go back in and see if anything can be usefully improved.
9) Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. - Elmore Leonard, author. (From “10 Rules of Writing”, 2001).
Font adds: You think he’s joking. Believe us, we see it all the time. Beginner writers are especially fond of introductions but the danger is that by the time you’re finished introducing, the editor’s gone on tea break and your manuscipt’s in the boomerang pile, waiting to go back to you. Start in the middle of the action. Always.
10) When it comes to the meaning of anything, even the simplest word, then you must pause. Because there are two great categories of meaning, forever separate. There is mob-meaning, and there is individual meaning. — D.H. Lawrence, author, in “Pornography and Obscenity”.
Font adds: Food for thought. And here’s a better known quote that’s seems quite different but is actually closely related to what Lawrence is saying about meaning. “Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
Individual meaning has many dimensions, some of which emerge only in the process. When you feel like jumping up and out of the chair, or you are resisting going there in the first place, it is often because you are on the verge of a breakthrough to another level. And a breakthrough in the meaning of the work has meaning for you too.
Your writing and your life are intricately related. So sit back down — seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Find the words that describe precisely what it all means to you, in this moment. Give it expression.
Stay with it and you’ll soon have a novel on your hands.
4 Responses to “Writing A Novel: 10 Top Tips”
Leave a Reply
 |
March 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
#1 is so true! I’m amazed at the number of people who say they don’t have enough time for their writing (or whatever their hobby of choice happens to be) yet they can tell you what happened on the last episode of American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.
If you’re watching TV, grocery shopping more than once a week, or going to the mall when there’s no specific item you need to buy, you have time to write. There are a lot of other places in a day to “steal” time, but those are the most common ones I see.
#9: Most prologues are useful for the writer but not the reader.
Nearly all my novels start out having a prologue which I later cut once I’ve got my mind firmly in the world I’m writing about.
Write the prologue, use it, then kill it. Recycle it into a short story, if you can, or use it on your blog or author website to create buzz and give your readers a little “extra.”
March 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Great advice Bunnygirl. What are your novels about?
April 4th, 2008 at 11:04 am
[…] Ross presents Writing A Novel: 10 Top Tips posted at WRITING ADVICE & PUBLISHING ADVICE from Font, saying, “Great writing advice […]
April 7th, 2008 at 5:21 am
[…] Ross presents Writing A Novel: 10 Top Tips posted at WRITING ADVICE & PUBLISHING ADVICE from Font, saying, “Writing tips from […]