Undulating Ungulate

So, now you have decided to embark on a path of ruin, despair and madness anyway, the question remains: How do you write a novel?

Do it every day.

That’s basically it. Write every day.

Every single day.

Forget your romantic stories about Kerouac on amphetamine in an attic for two weeks churning out On The Road. Writing is an exemplar of the parable of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise will finish the book. The hare will burn out. The muse may strike, or it may not. If you wait for it, you will be an gray old bunny by the side of the road, with three chapters in a desk drawer, wheezing about how great your book would have been.

Writing, beyond a certain point, is craft as much as inspiration. One moment of inspiration can take two years to realise. That is a novel. Put your ass in the chair every day and write. That is writing.

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel, but assuredly, all the advice contains at least this truth: write every day. (Think about what you do every day. Eat, sleep, breathe, shit. Things that keep you alive. You need to add writing to that list.) Engage with the novel, the world, the characters, the ideas, in some way, every day. Make a little progress, every day. Nothing feels worse than returning to the page after a week at the point you were with no progress made. Except coming back to it a month later and realising you have to put the entire book back in your head before you can even write the next scene.

Got that, yet? Write every day. That’s how novels get written.

Twice a day is better.

Filed by billy at 1:45 pm under language,the moose
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