Get going, get writing, get happy
A recent blog — Do not fear what you hear (or read) — suggested we can sometimes become distracted by all manner of wonderful advice on how to start writing a novel. The volume and wildly varying quality of material advising aspiring authors can be overwhelming. Where to start? Where does the best advice hide out? What if I miss the seminal information? Those courses look expensive. Do I really need to do one?
Write and write and write, until you’re done
Do not fret and get all tied up with concerns about all the expertise you don’t have, stifling your creative urges by overwhelming them with theoretical and dollar demands. If you do, you will miss all the fun. Put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and get going. Writers write.
Do you have an idea? Can you see some of the characters forming, readying themselves for a star performance? Do you know some of the places they go and what they get up to? Are there some secrets forming in your mind, ready to be delivered with stunning impact or drip fed to the budding detective that resides in all of us?
What's that? You're not sure of the ending or how the crime boss escapes for the second time or what to do with the relationship between the ship's captain and the French passenger?
Find your books in all the best places
Your biggest challenge is to stop worrying about what you have not yet unravelled in your tale and get down what you have. Free your mind of all the clutter, leaving space for you to devise and develop characters and settings matching those recently released from their previous frozen state.
If you go to gatherings with fellow writers, you will quickly notice writers are great at finding things to do which prevent them from being authors. A lot of these “things to do” are, in fact, gambits taking them away from their real calling. They become readers, thinkers, planners, observers, meeting attendees. But not writers.
Be careful not to give your creativity enough freedom to plan a brilliant idea into oblivion. If it is not pre-warned, the mind can build its own interpretation of a process, growing it in complexity, difficulty and size, to become an insurmountable wall blocking the way forward. It can listen to too many “experts”, shoving their latest piece into the writing arena, offering a bewildering kaleidoscope of “must read if you want to succeed as a writer” opportunities for procrastination. Don’t be hypnotized by the marketing hype.
Keep copious notes
The thoughts, excitement and anticipation you sense when you explore what is rattling around your head should not be allowed to shrivel and die. Think about what it would be like getting your novel onto coffee tables around the world. Bring them to life, nurture them. As your characters pop up in various settings throughout your work, they will thank you for the recognition. So, it is proper to promote them from notions that have become part of you to lives lived for all to enjoy across the pages on those coffee tables.
Why wait for the right moment, the precise time when you have just the right volume of ideas and knowledge to start writing. Why wait until you have every scene, every location, plot twist and character labelled within a precise time frame? The right time to write is now. Once you begin, you will find yourself drawn into your work.Dream of sitting at your work with words swirling before you, ready to be snatched from their play and placed with infinite care onto your pages. The word choice is unlimited. You can lead the reader wherever you want, play with their emotions, give them a break from an unforgiving world. Unearth a tale that fascinates, that is destined to sit, pride of place, in reading lists, “book-of-the-week” reviews and resting in partially read states in suburban homes.
