How to Write a Book: a Surviver's Guide
Prose & Pens vol.I
Picture this: I’m twenty-five, completely lost, and in therapy. I go on and on about how unhappy I am, the different industries that sort of interest me, and I stretch the concept of transferable skills to its very limits. At the end of my sessions, I always go back to one thing: that idea I have for a book.
Eventually, I catch my therapist on a bad day, and he says: “Will you just sit down and write that book already?”
My response then: it’s not that simple.
The truth as I know it now: it is and it isn’t.
There’s a myth among creatives that inspiration has to hit you before you do anything. If I’m using my incredibly useless art history degree, I can tell you this myth of the artist was formed in the 19th century, and it’s the romanticisation of dying of tuberculosis in squalor somewhere in Montmartre.
I’m not sure about you, but that’s not how I want to go.
So what then? Say one day, ‘The Muse’ hits you, and you get this incredible idea for a novel; where do you even start?
THE PANTSER vs. THE PLOTTER
A mythical duality
While the term plotter may be self-explanatory, a pantser, on the other hand, may need some explanation. Simply put, a pantser is someone who’s flying by the seat of their pants. They are diving into the process of writing without a plan and just seeing how things progress.
In reality, it isn’t that simple. I’m your stereotypical perfectionist with slightly controlling tendencies, so of course, I started by searching online for character development sheets. How did that go, you ask me? Well, I started writing a romance novel, and it somehow developed into a murder mystery set in a wedding where I kill the bride on the first page, so…
A pantser may get lost in their sea of ideas. A plotter may never get off their outline. In my humble opinion, you need flexibility to finish a novel. You need to be able to attack, have new ideas, and let your characters and your plot develop organically, but you also need to be able to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and plan your next move accordingly.
I add a big caveat here that some genres ask for more planning than others. If, for instance, you are a fantasy author, please take your time to develop your magic system and build your world. Otherwise, you’ll be looking at some serious retconning in the future (ala J.K Rowling and the ‘Put-Outer’).
In any case, you are in good company. Stephen King and Margaret Atwood are proud pantsers, while J.R.R. Tolkien and Gillian Flynn are plotters. It’s up to you to find what works for you; speaking of which…
SIT YOUR BUM DOWN AND WRITE
Or maybe stand up and write. I don’t mean to look down on the standing desk enthusiasts among us. JUST WRITE.
I often compare the beginning of writing a book with a SpongeBob scene where he spends hours “writing” an essay only to come out with a very intricately designed “The”. We get so caught up in the minor details that we forget somewhere along the way the only way to write a book is to actually write a book. I want to say I spent weeks in the first paragraph of my manuscript, trying to convey the exact atmosphere I wanted. When it finally came out, it seemed perfect.
In the subsequent year, that paragraph, which I spent so long ‘perfecting’, has been turned inside out and is not even in the first chapter anymore. Honestly, at this point, I’m only keeping it out of spite.
Because I know from experience you need to read this, here we go:
Doing research isn’t writing.
Reading similar books to the one you want to write isn’t writing.
Reading this post (hi btw! thanks for reading!) isn’t writing.
Deciding between using MS Word or any of the other writing softwares isn’t writing.
While all those things I listed can be incredibly important to the development of your craft and you should 100% spend some of your time doing them, books, however, don’t write themselves (as much as I wish they did). The only way to write a book is to write, even if it is one sentence a day. I know it’s daunting, and it doesn’t matter how passionate you are about it; writing is hard. So when the going gets tough, you might ask yourself:
WHAT IS MOTIVATION ANYWAY?
Hitting a wall, what now?
You began writing your book, everything is going great, you feel that surge of motivation that only passion can give you, and then, if you’re anything like me, you hit a wall.
Motivation can only get you so far; unfortunately, there comes a time for us creatives to learn discipline and create habits.
Not to go all Atomic Habits on you, but motivation will get you started; habits are what will keep you going. So let’s work on creating a good, healthy writing routine:
Pick a time to write
Pick a time of the day when you know you have the time and create the commitment of writing. And I don’t mean find 2 hours in your busy schedule to write; set an alarm for 5 minutes if that’s all the time you have and get however many words you can out during that time. If 5 minutes were enough and you’re tired, great, close your laptop or put down your pen and come back to it tomorrow. If you feel like continuing writing after the 5 minutes, by all means, go ahead.
One thing I want to normalise is that it doesn’t matter if you wrote two or two thousand words in the time you allocated; what matters is that you put the effort in. These variations in your output volume are normal, and I would venture so far as to say they have nothing to do with ‘the muse’ and much more with how tired you are, if you feel stressed, how well you know the topic and much more.
Your commitment is to put in the work; unfortunately, staring blankly at the screen is the work some days.
On another note, I learned over the years to look at these commitments as promises to myself. I would never break a promise to someone I love, so why was I so okay with breaking promises to myself? This slight shift in framing was a game-changer for me.
Focus on Smaller Goals
This goes hand-in-hand with my previous point, but you don’t just wake up one day, decide to run a marathon, and proceed to run it straight away. You have to break it down. Focus on smaller goals like:
‘This week I’ll work on my main character’s backstory’;
‘Today I’ll write the description of my location’;
‘I’ll finish writing chapter III by (pick a date)’.
I’m all for being gentle with yourself, and writing can be an extremely vulnerable thing to do, but I personally can’t move forward without setting deadlines. My advice to you is to pick one small and achievable thing to do per day or week, write it down and commit to doing it. Please notice that the keywords here are small and achievable.
Join Communities
I'll admit I’m not good at this, but the bright side of the internet is how linked we all are. Explore Booktwitter and Booktok, join a writing class, there are tons of discord channels, writing communities, Facebook groups and honestly, the world is filled with people craving connection. Why not make new friends with similar interests and who could hold you accountable to your goals?
I’LL NEVER WRITE AS WELL AS…
Hello, impostor syndrome! It’s good to see you again!
Look, I’ll level with you, there are some writers out there who are just out of this world, so beautifully talented that most of us, mere mortals, could never compare. After all, you can’t convince me a human was capable of writing things like:
“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”
- José Saramago, Blindness
or,
“‘Damn it,’ he sighed. ‘How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!’
He examined the room with the clairvoyance of his last days, and for the first time he saw the truth: the final borrowed bed, the pitiful dressing table whose clouded, patient mirror would not reflect his image again, the chipped porcelain washbasin with the water and towel and soap meant for other hands, the heartless speed of the octagonal clock racing toward the ineluctable appointment at seven minutes past one on his final afternoon of December 17. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and began to listen to the radiant voices of the slaves singing the six o’clock Salve in the mills, and through the window he saw the diamond of Venus in the sky that was dying forever, the eternal snows, the new vine whose yellow bellflowers he would not see bloom on the following Saturday in the house closed in mourning, the final brilliance of life that would never, through all eternity, be repeated again.”
- Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth
or even,
“We all owe death a life.”
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
So why even try? Maybe try on the off chance you’re one of those geniuses, and if so, please stop keeping your talent from this world! Maybe try because you have a story to tell, and that matters. Maybe try because you love writing, even if it drives you crazy sometimes. Maybe try because your writing has the potential to touch someone’s soul, the same way so many books have touched yours.
At the end of the day, writing is incredibly subjective. I may not understand how, but I’m sure someone out there can read the quotes above and not be touched, similarly to how I would find what they consider to be poignant writing, bland.
The secret here is to study, to read, to find what you like to read and learn to emulate it. Then add some of yourself, develop your own style, try, fail and try again. That’s the key to good writing: trying again.
Because as hard as it may seem to believe, that book, yes, the one you think is the most beautiful prose ever written, has once been a shitty first draft on someone’s desk, and that someone probably thought those pages would amount to nothing at one point or another.
Books go through countless edits before being published. By their authors, their agents, their editors. Probably even by the author’s mother! So what I have to tell you is:
Stop 👏 Comparing 👏 Your 👏 Process 👏 To 👏 Someone 👏 Else’s 👏 Outcome 👏
LITTLE BITS OF WISDOM GOING FORWARD
Write what you know
If you’re stuck and don’t know how to progress your plot, try writing about something you know well. Is the setting you chose inspired by your hometown? Write a detailed description of that place. Is your hero based on someone you have known and loved? Describe the exact blue of his eyes. Is your book an exploration of a pain you know well? Go on and on about every soul-shattering detail.
You get the drill.
Save these descriptions for later; they might not come up for another 100 pages, but I’m sure some parts of it will come up incredibly useful in bringing texture or emotional resonance to your prose. Also, for whatever reason, describing something you know tends to be a lot easier than coming up with something from scratch; doing so might just be what you need to get the creative juices flowing.
You’ll never be original
We are products of the places we’ve been, the people we’ve met, and the media we’ve consumed. While doing your research, you’ll most likely find someone out there who’s written a story so similar to yours that you’ll want to give up. Don’t.
Think about what you bring that is different. Is it a fresh angle? New characters? Diversity to a genre? New motifs to be explored? The fact that you’re writing this book makes it different from all others; put parts of yourself into the pages, the rest will follow.
Somehow my comprehensive guide turned into a 2k word post, but I truly hope you’ll find some useful information in my rambling. I’ll cut off before I start another long-winded paragraph; thank you for reading!
Have a great weekend and ‘til next time!
All my love,
P.S. Yes, I just spent an incredible amount of time choosing the right font for that M