How To: Actually Write and Finish Your Book. 3 Steps to Guide You Through

Writing a book is one of those things that's designed to impress everyone. You say it, and you almost have to allow two extra seconds for it to land and for the impressed looks to land on you. It's the rule, I think because intuitively everyone understands that writing is hard. And writing consistently for as long as is required to complete a manuscript is very hard. But here's a shaky truth- it's not that hard. I'll repeat, writing a book is not that hard. It simply requires consistency and discipline. If you keep putting 1000 words on a page every day, in a hundred days you'll have a 100,000-word novel. So writing a book is just a matter of not giving up on writing that book. Now writing a good book...that's a completely different story. THAT is difficult and not a single person alive can really tell you how to do it. Either you can or you can't and such is the unfairness of art.

But for today, we're focusing on the simpler goal of novel completion. The absolutely necessary, confidence-building accomplishment that every writer needs before they can set their sights on the more elusive, grandiose goal of writing a good novel. This is a guide on how to get your butt in the chair and keep your butt in said chair to write. Day after day, even as you start to lose all hope somewhere in the middle of your novel; even as you start to ask yourself why on earth you ever thought writing was a good use of your time (or anyone's time) in the first place; even as your plot seems to unravel in front of your very eyes; and even as you weep into the keyboard. The time will come when you feel like giving up, and this will likely happen more than once. This post is to be an ever-present pep-talk to get you through the self-doubt and guide you to the promise of the next page. Essentially, this is a 'how not to stop before you get to the end' guide.

I've boiled this down to two questions. Why is it difficult to get through the first manuscript and what part exactly is difficult? So, why is it difficult? Well, because it's boring. At some point, this amazing story that you love and were so excited to start just loses its appeal and you find yourself feeling like you're facing an insurmountable obstacle. This is normal. You're not a fraud. You simply can't see the wood for the trees because you are in the middle of a very dense forest. Second, which part is difficult? The middle. To be fair, every part of your book has the potential to be extremely difficult, but there is something almost otherworldly about the specific difficulty of the middle. There's a term called 'the saggy middle' for a reason. The beginning is bright and exciting because you're pumped about starting your novel and you're still energized by all the possibilities of perfection that lie ahead. The ending is great because you can feel yourself drawing towards the close and just the idea of completion is enough to give you a much needed second (or third or fiftieth) wind to power through. So the problem lies in the middle, because all that awaits you in the middle is despair. So, here's how you get through it in three easy steps:

1. Adjust your daily word count to maintain your sanity.

Sometimes, you just can't write more and this happens often during the middle, so give yourself a break. Don't create space between yourself and your writing (bad idea because then you have to fight the inertia to get back into it again), rather, if you must, reduce the amount of writing you expect of yourself on a daily basis. If in the beginning of your drafting process, you were consistently putting down at least 2,500 words, try go down to 1,500 just while writing feels like your mortal enemy. It's an instant boost that at least at the beginning will make the task ahead feel more doable, and help to get you through the worst of it. Remember, the most important thing is to just keep writing.

2. Allow for some terrible writing.

Just accept that you are about to do some of your worst ever writing. Atrocious. And it's okay. Fight the urge to edit the truly bad parts (there will be truly bad parts that almost hurt you to see show up on the page) because going backward will break your momentum and what you need to preserve more than anything right now is momentum. When you write what you feel is a truly terrible paragraph/ page/ chapter, just repeat these words to yourself as many times as you need to hear them: 'This is only my first draft. Nobody but me will ever see it. I will fix it when I edit.' These words are the reason most, if not all, of the books we love ever made it past the first draft stage to eventually become the gorgeous, polished works we adore. So give yourself grace, bad writing can be fixed, but incomplete novels cannot.

3. Seriously, keep going.

At this point you may have realized that the advice I have to share is rather repetitive, and that's because there is no hack. Words don't write themselves and to complete your manuscript you're just going to have to write them. So write them. Squeeze them out at all cost. One sentence after the other, just keep going. Just. keep. going. Take naps if you have to, call a friend if you have to. Drink if you must, just continue to put words on a page and drive your story forward. There is a point in every story where every writer thinks 'this is shit...this is definitely shit'. It might be, but keep writing anyway. Just. keep. writing.

And then, somehow, you'll find yourself on the other side of the slump, no longer in a saggy section of word vomit but on the once again firm ground of your story. You'll pick up the scent of where you were trying to go all along, and you will realize with the fullness of your being that the end is in sight. You're in the home stretch now and that simple truth alone will carry you the rest of the way. Then, at the end of your first draft, you'll not only have a completed manuscript, but also the solid, proven knowledge that you know how to get through the pits of drafting. You've survived the middle (or whatever section proved challenging for you) and if you did it once you can do it again. This may seem small, but just knowing that will make each successive drafting process that much easier. You now have experience to draw from. You can write and complete a novel. You are impressive. Now go celebrate, go feel extremely proud of yourself. Go tell other people and allow for pauses long enough so that they too, can feel adequately proud of you. You did it.

At this point, you probably never want to see your manuscript again and this is rather perfect because the best thing you can do now is put distance between yourself and it. Take AT LEAST a few weeks, I suggest a month, away from your work so that when you finally come back, you can have the fresh eyes and objectivity needed to successfully carry out the next step: Editing.

Neil Gaiman said, "the process of writing your second draft is the process of making it seem like you knew what you were doing all along." Amen. All the magic happens during editing. But that's a post for another time.

If you're in the drafting trenches I hope this post helps you. If you're considering writing a book but are unclear about where to even start, then I have something for you. I've created a Free 7 Day Workbook to help new and aspiring authors move their book idea from their head to the page by guiding them through the plotting process. In a detailed and thoughtful way, I guide you through avoiding some of the mistakes I made as well as provide methodologies for developing your plot. In the end, you'll have a fleshed out book idea and detailed plot and you'll be ready to confidently start drafting. You can sign up for the Free Workbook here.

Either way, that I'll see you on the other side.

Best of luck,

Noni

The Gnawing Call to Write a Book: An Author Origin Story

Authentic (originating from within) desire is like an unbearable itch that must be scratched. An intense itch, like the one from deep under a tightly laid wig that forces you into a frenzy of hair pats- I've been there. I think the things we wish to achieve are unique to each of us, but I dare say the intensity of the desire to achieve them is the same. For me, that specific thing was to write a book and it took me by surprise. It wasn't premeditated as I would have thought such an undertaking should be, it just happened. I was always good at writing, words have always come naturally to me and so, naturally, I thought nothing of it. It's not something I had ever considered, that I could make a living being a writer, that writing was a career that could be pursued. In all the nine schools that I went to, not a single career expo ever featured a writer.

It sounds silly now, but I couldn't fathom that anyone would ever pay me to write things. That would be much too easy and I was fully convinced that I had to suffer and do difficult things in order to succeed. So when it came time to pick a course of study for university, I pushed the writing that came so easily to the background and chose to move in the complete opposite direction. My thought process was as follows: "I'm smart, great at math, good at science. Every career fair has at least one engineer and 'engineering' is just so nice to say, so impressive. Also, my mom is an engineer so obviously it's a great choice for me too. Only thing is, she's a mechanical engineer so I have to do something different. Ooooh I know, I'll do civil engineering. That's the one with the roads and the bridges. What could go wrong?"

As I was suffering through my second year of an engineering degree I had no business being in, I was forced to find a coping mechanism. This, of course, is hindsight clarity. At the time, it seemed that words just quietly slipped back into my life and I found myself writing again. In a moment of frustration over an assignment I didn't want to do, I felt called to write instead. A small, internal whisper that said, "just write something, anything, and then you can get back to that assignment." I obeyed and the first fertile seed was planted. I began to write as a means of staying sane and feeding my soul all the things that engineering was sucking out of it. I began to craft a story, just one day in my dorm room, I opened a new document and started to type. No planning, no expectation, just a deep need to see the ideas in my head sprawled in front of me in word form. This was the blossoming of my seed. Writing that first book felt so right, like doing something I was always meant to but hadn't gotten around to. For something I was doing for the very first time, it felt surprisingly familiar. You know that 'I swear I've done this before' feeling? It felt like that. Looking back now, I'm moved by the purity of the desire and grateful for the ease with which my passion seemingly revealed itself to me. I wrote and wrote, riding on the excitement of the unexpected joy I was getting from the exercise. I wrote as a reward for completing my soul-crushing homework, or as a way to hype myself up to start what would be a soul-crushing assignment. What started out as a meaningless project quickly turned into my most engaging, I started to write every day. And then I had to write every day.

Related: How To Know if it's Time to Scrap Your Book - The Book I had to Scrap and Why

I wrote with the confidence that can only belong to a complete novice, no idea was bad, every impulse was yielded to. I got acquainted and then familiar with my characters, surprising myself with the things I wrote them into. I gave myself freedom on the page, and I think perhaps that was the greatest discovery. Suddenly, in the space that existed between the speed of my fingers and the speed of my thoughts- I was a creator. Of worlds, of people, situations, emotions, and outcomes. I was also an instrument, feeling myself swept up in the very story that I was writing to such an extent that often it felt like I was merely the one called to capture it, more than I was creating it; as though the story had its own life and existed outside of me while also within me. It's a difficult thing to explain, being in flow, but it is for me the very essence of the creative process. Being in flow feels like you and inspiration, which is this otherworldly force outside of you, are simultaneously breathing life into this new idea and watching it take shape. It also breathes new life into you, the artist, and it's how I explain non-stop hours of blissful concentration where I could (and still can) just write and write.

And write and write I did, for two months, until I had completed a full manuscript. I remember the feeling of completion, both awe-inspiring and anticlimactic. I remember reading it again and thinking, "just needs a quick edit but other than that it's perfect." I now know of course that it was, in fact, very bad, but that is not the point of this particular blog post (but I will explore that later because so much can be learned from that first scrapped book) so I'll chalk it up to blissful, novice pride and move on. I suppose what that experience was about wasn't the book that I wrote, it was about that I wrote a book. And I loved it. It was about both identifying and then satisfying that deep urge to do so. It was about awakening to the sounds of my own desires, my true desires that I had never even known to explore. Since that first book, I have never looked back and I have never stopped writing. I've continued to water that seed, watched it take root and sprout. That first book shifted the universe for me, clicked it into place. Suddenly, I knew that everything else was to exist around this form of writing. This exhausting, time consuming, and utterly exposing form of writing. It's my sincerest offering to the world and sincere is all I ever want it to be. It's the whisper of a call I listened to that I can now recognize as a profound turning point in my life. I wonder what your own gnawing call was..or is?

If it happens to be 'to write a book' like it was for me, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed about where and how to start. Worry not, I have something that might help and I'm excited to share it with you. I created a Free 7 Day Workbook to help new and aspiring authors move their book idea from their head to the page by guiding them through the plotting process. In a detailed and thoughtful way, I guide you through avoiding some of the mistakes that I had learn and grow through the hard way, as well as provide methodologies for developing your plot. While I can't promise you perfection, I can tell you that in the end, you'll have a fleshed out book idea and a detailed plot, both of which will prepare you to confidently start drafting. You can sign up for the Free Workbook here.

Sending you my best until we speak again,

Noni

Book Review: When you ask me where I'm going by Jasmin Kaur

I picked this up almost by accident in a pile at Barnes & Noble just as my husband rejoined me so we could join the line. We'd done our solo browsing and it was now or never, the moment to commit to whatever book(s) we were keeping. James somehow always has at least five books from which he forces himself to pick two, an agonizing process that he forces me to participate in. I tend to browse for books in the opposite way, bookmarking shelves in my head as I choose my 'maybes', just in case I have to go back and declare that book victorious after all. I don't like to pick up a book and walk around with it, only to leave it at a different table than I found it at the last minute. It feels cruel, unkind. I'm certain the books can feel the rejection. This book compelled me to pick it up almost as soon as I set eyes on it, something about the simplicity of the cover and the gravity of the title. I studied it and thought, 'definitely maybe'. At decision time it was the only book that called me back and seemed to whisper, 'take me, I have things to tell you.' I looked at the picture of the author to help me decide and she exuded a careful cool that also seemed to say, 'you want to listen to the things I have to tell you.' And so it was decided that we were to go home together.

I love this book for the simple way it uses language. Like with the cover, the simplicity delivers something complex, grave and beautiful. Words are used so delicately that it makes it easy to get lost in the story, to shed your own skin and for a time inhabit someone else's: that of an immigrant trying desperately to fit into the new, unwelcoming society they've been thrust into; that of a woman in a culture that blames every ill on her, even when she is clearly the victim; that of a young woman simply trying to navigate life in a prickly, modern world. The use of parts of human anatomy as connective tissue for the different parts of the book is clever and acts as a great foreshadowing tool that also gives the book a nice flow. The poems are easy while carrying depth. Here are two I enjoyed very early on.

However, as with most things, there were parts I didn't quite enjoy as much as the rest. Along with the collection of poems that span the manuscript, she also wrote what I will call a novella in the body of the book. While I did like the story interlaced with the poetry, I suppose the simplicity I love in poetry doesn't always translate directly to what I love in storytelling. I felt that the style should have thus changed slightly to accommodate and it didn't. I think because of this, I found myself in certain settings that felt drawn to create specific emotions, like I was being coerced into feeling something; moments that were perhaps too over simplified that it resulted in a staging rather than a telling; instances where I read the words rather than felt them. It didn't happen often, which is why it stood it when it did.

All that said, I still loved the time I got to spend with this book. I think I also always enjoy witnessing the critical eye turned inward. To experience people who love their cultures question the very foundations those cultures are built on, and to do so honestly. It takes a certain strength and grace, a certain nerve and honesty. It's not easy and I'm always impressed by it. As an author, it's what I live to do, as an artist it's the very fertilizer necessary for my growth. But, as a human, it's the most uncomfortable stretch. It's uncomfortable to brush up abrasively against all that you know, to push back against it and to refuse to give it a free pass. But it is necessary and I enjoyed Jasmin's version of this. I feel richer for it. It made me feel things, good and bad, saucy and grave. It's a look into a different culture that isn't that different at all. It's a commentary on humanity. It's a quick read that I would recommend to anyone who loves words and their honest manifestations.

Official rating: 3.5 out of 5