In the last blog, I provided a crash course in novel planning, providing the approach I took in writing my first novel, The Kaiser's Machines: Panzerwanderer. For the purposes of this article, which is predicated on my experience publishing my first book, the planning, editing, and launch phases are the shortest and should take no longer than 14 days each. That leaves you 62 days to write a completed draft.
If you can do it in less time, that's great. But what I have found, and why I made the writing phase the most time consuming in this process, is that it's the easiest step to fall off and not hit your goal. In this blog, I will share what I did to ensure I completed the book and not let it fall by the wayside to collect dust.
Write – Step One: What's Your Writing Schedule?
In my head, I told myself I needed to write at least one thousand to two thousand words a day (excluding weekends, some days I wrote longer than 2K words too). My first book ended up being 58,000 words, which is on the shorter side for novels (The Hobbit is around 80K, to put it in perspective. Most are between 80-100K).
That meant I could get away with 1,000 words and finish a draft in 58 days. If you need to write a 100K book and take 14 days for planning and editing, that means you have to write around 1,600 words every day for 62 days straight. You'll need to stick with whatever you decide and maintain discipline. Some days you'll write more than others, which will help you flex if you miss a day. So, determine how many words you need to write in a week and write something daily.
Write – Step Two: Do You Have A Plan For Each Chapter?
If you've developed a plot but have not figured out how to move your character or characters from point A to point B, the writing will likely not come. I typically map out the book, writing down a short description, sometimes a sentence, of what I think that chapter or scene will focus on. This helps me visualize the journey. I would advise not to overthink it, though, for as you write organically, you might add or cut scenes based on where your writing takes you.
That leads me to my next point. I perpetually have a sinking feeling inside of me. It's a feeling that I need to work on that one project. That it'll never get done if I don't work on it. But then, when I sit down to work on it, I hit a wall. Many call it writer's block, but I think there's a difference. There's writer's block: you don't know where to start (which the planning phase and mapping out your chapters should help with). Then there's another kind more closely related to another word—motivation.
Motivation is as unreliable as my favorite local pizza restaurant's Wi-Fi. You'll fail if you solely rely on motivation to write a book. Trust me. Because the vast majority of the time, I don't feel motivated to write other than I know I need to do it. What I try to rely on is discipline. That's where your weekly writing word-count goal comes into effect. Try not to worry about the text being gold as soon as it hits the page. Just start writing, and you'll find that it'll start slow, and it'll become a snowball effect where you find that once you've started, it's easier to keep going.
Write – Step Three: Consistency Is Key
I learned the hard way with my books that if you aren't consistent, it'll make more work for you later. There are three things that I have fixed over time that I learned were mistakes.
The first was choosing not to use my characters' first names consistently. Some were referred to by their first names, others by their last names. The idea was that in most military units, people are referred to by their last name or a nickname. While it made it seem more realistic, it also made it less personal, making it harder for readers to connect with my characters. It also made my storytelling inconsistent, which I felt impacted readability.
Second, be mindful of stylistic choices. For example, I initially chose to spell "machine gun" as one word, "machinegun." That was a stylistic choice. I have now fixed it to spell it as two words. But these little things can quickly add up and kill you in the editing phase. So, as you write, be mindful of these choices and stay consistent.
And third, be careful of adding extra plot lines or features if you haven't thought it through. When you write, sometimes, s**t happens. A new character you hadn't planned pops up, or a tangent now takes the story down a different path. There's nothing wrong with that. My only caution is that you make sure that you see it through. I added a mysterious plot point but never resolved it. I intended to resolve it but never did, and eventually, I ended up editing it out and fitting that part back into my original plot. Be vigilant of creativity when it spontaneously combusts.
Write – Step Four: Editing Help and Formatting
As I've mentioned in my recent self-publishing blog series, you should think about formatting in advance. That means setting up your Word doc to have the proper page size (mine was 6x9) and that you've already implemented the correct margins and paragraph setup. Going back after you've written to fix your doc was a part that killed me. I was already exhausted from the writing and editing, but then having to format the book nearly had me throwing my computer monitor out the window. I am pretty sure I lost hair from that. Or, at the very least, add some grey ones.
The other thing I highly recommend investing in is a paid subscription to Grammarly. Having that extra editing support as you write makes the next phase much more manageable. You'll catch most of the issues before the editing phase, which means you can focus on up-leveling the writing rather than wrangling grammar.
From Writing to Editing and Final Launch
If this is your first book, I would not make it harder on yourself and try to write a 100K-word novel. I consciously chose that my first book was probably going to be on the shorter side. Especially since it would be part of a trilogy, I needed the endurance to write two more books after this one.
If a trilogy is not your thing, then going longer will be easier, but the time crunch of 90 days will make it more challenging. The last book I wrote was a prequel to my trilogy, A Designer With No Name. It was closer to the 70K-word mark, but I also spent more time with it because I had just finished writing a trilogy at lightspeed. Committing to a trilogy is a lot, so prepare yourself for the long haul.
In the next blog, I'll dive a little more into the editing phase and what you need to think about to launch your book on schedule effectively. In the meantime, as always, if you would like to receive updates whenever I write a new blog or provide a writing update, consider joining my newsletter.
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