Hello Strangers,

Welcome! How have you been? Personally, I’m glad to be back here; this blog feels like the inside of the cottage I have in my head. This post will discuss some of the preconceived notions I had about writing a novel, and what ended up being true instead. (There’s a note about my future plans for the ‘Art and Writing’ section of my blog at the end.)

Writing would be a linear process.

I thought that if I had 30,000 words written, that would mean I’d be about a third of the way through my narrative. In other words, writing a book would be like reading a book and all the pieces would fall neatly into place.

What actually happened:

With 30,000 words written, I have a rough beginning, middle, and end. As I continue, I’m building in more character development and foreshadowing, and after I work through those, I plan to add more depth to the plot and detail to the world building. After I finished that first draft, I wrote quite a few things out of order as I realized I needed them.

I’d only have one outline.

I assumed that I’d use one outline that detailed the entire story, and maybe I’d add to that if I needed to.

What actually happened:

I have a main outline which enabled me to write my first draft. However, when I read through the story I realized that it needed a lot of new scenes to build up my character interactions. These were hard to write though, so now when I come to particularly difficult scenes, I outline them and it helps me avoid getting writer’s block. 

I’d only need two or three drafts.

I read in a murder mystery recently about a minor character who’d been working on her novel for ten years. The main character thinks to herself that the manuscript is probably unreadable and should be scrapped as it can’t possibly be salvaged. For better or for worse, that stuck with me as I began my first novel. I’ve been scared of overcomplicating things and taking too long to write it, so I thought I’d give myself a limit of three drafts and two years to finish this story.

What actually happened:

My first draft included the skeleton of the plot, it has all of the characters and their relationships, as well as the setting. It’s the bare bones of everything. In my second draft, I’m focusing on the characters. In the third draft, I plan to add the findings from my research and strengthen the plot. Now I know that I’ll most likely need a fourth draft for restructuring and fixing continuity errors, and a fifth one for true editing and finishing touches. Those numbers are the minimum. This is my first big project and even if it fails, it will teach me so much about myself and my process, so I don’t need to limit myself with this. I need to breathe and figure out how I do things.

I thought that real writers always push past writer’s block.

…

What actually happened:

I’ve discovered that for me, it is beneficial when I get stuck to step back from my work. Sometimes I give myself a few minutes, a few hours, a few days to work on a problem. I might write a scene outline, I might talk through that scene with my sister. I might delete what I’ve written and start again. And sometimes, I truly disconnect and do laundry, cook, or handle business. In the end, I sit down and write the worst version. After it’s written, I feel better about it, and I can move on. That’s my editor’s problem in a few months. (I’m my editor.)

I expected people to care more…

Some writers find or build support systems, or writing groups, or other things of that nature. 

What actually happened:

I don’t know how to do that yet, I haven’t yet, and while my family and friends are very supportive and loving about my stories, most people don’t want to hear the broken-sentence-synopsis of a book that doesn’t exist yet. The author is the only person that has all the miniscule details in their mind, so asking others their opinion of them won’t usually help you. Even if you want to include others, they’ll likely be busy with their own lives and it’s easy to feel isolated. Spend time with those you love, do your work and practice your hobbies, but remember that it’s okay; you’re writing because you have a story to tell, or want to explore your personhood, or you just want to say you’re a writer. It’s alright that a good bit of it happens alone. Keep going.

Those are the notions that have been challenged so far, I hope they can be helpful to you in your writing! What I wanted to say about the future of this section is this: I love art, it was my favorite creative outlet before writing, and the two are probably equally important to me now. Within the next year, I plan to release far more posts about art (painting, drawing, sketching, the creative process, etc.) that I have been able to thus far. For now, there will be more posts about writing. I’m excited about what the future holds!

Until next time,

–Mabel