The Joys of Fiction

How to keep going

As I am typing this, I've just drawn a scene in pen from my novel I've been working on for 4 years, which just hit 100k words this morning at 12.45am.

Let me tell you, if you think writing is easy, you're wrong. Keeping it going is what makes it hard.

You sit down with a notebook, you write in a dreamy state all the ideas you have for a story that you'll turn into a novel and hope to get published some day. You get to chapter 1. Little do you know that you're probably going to be doing this for quite a few months, maybe even years.
If you're a studen, you have to find time to balance this project between all your schoolwork and important subjects. If you work, you have to find some time before or after work or even in your lunch break to write that little tidbit.

Here's how to keep going at it: slog it through. The first draft is literally brain vomit. The editing process is what polishes it into a work of art out of that vomit, to turn it into something refined and beautiful.

as Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft of everything is shit." I don't know about you, but this makes me feel a hell of a lot lighter because no matter what you put on the page, you have an excuse for it being there because after you finish, the mistakes, plot holes, weird phrases and unstable characters will practically jump out at you and beg to be changed.
You know what Stephen King does? he says that after you finish your novel, put it away for a week or a few days and "let it age". Don't have anything to do with it. Don't even touch it for that time. Because then what needs to be fixed will clearly jump out at you like it's been highlighted. (When I go back to my first chapter, which I wrote as a skinny 12 year old, I cringe at it so much because there's so much I can't wait to fix. It's aged about 4 years and 3 months.)

Here's another way to keep going at your novel: DO NOT GO BACK AND EDIT WHILE YOU ARE STILL WRITING IT.

DO NOT EDIT.

DO NOT EDIT.

Why? Because it's like tripping over yourself before you even finish the race. It's like how movies aren't sent to post production before they finish filming, they have to finish filming all planned and possible extra shots so that absolutely everything is available to be picked to make it into the film.

Writing is like that. What happens if you start editing before you've finished? You start trying to make perfect what is not even whole. So make your story whole. Save the bother of editing for later.

Everyone says you should have a certain time of day to write. And mostly, they're right. You should know whether you feel more inspired at day or night or both, with a cup of tea, eating toast, balancing a cat on your lap, and a tv blaring in the background.
And I said "mostly" because I was refferring to writer's block. The dreaded blank page or document yawns big and long and white with your chapter heading being the most you've accomplished for the past half an hour. Your brain is sweating in anxiety over whether or not what you write will be considered worthy. You worry too much about the final product, not the ingredients that went in it.
And so there are two ways to cure writer's block: get away, do something fun, don't even think about your story.
The other way is to slog it through. Get it down. Power through this nightmare until the dark cloud has passed. Look back on it later.

This is my analogy: Writing is like a cake.
The ingredients are your basics: beginning, conflict, resolution. The writing is the mixing it together.
The cooking of the cake is your break time to clear your head. Taking it out of the oven is when you decide to put the icing on and make it look pretty, which is editing your labour of love to refine your characters, tie up loose ends and loop holes, throw in any little subplot that enhances it.
And writing, like all cakes, is never going to be baker's-commercial perfect. It's going to be misshapen in some unique little way that you have to just deal with.

And another thing on how to keep going: keep the writing for you. Ultimately, the person who should be proud of it is yourself, because for goodness sake it's YOUR labour of love, it's your baby. The aim should be to please yourself.
Because in pleasing yourself, you please others with how much thought you put into it.

And did you know that it took 16 years from Jane Austen's first draft of Pride and Prejudice to the time it got published? Which goes to say that all great works of art are labours of love.

Love, Steph <3
A/N: thanks to thos who read this. there was about 2 years where I barely posted anything on here and I know that's why my new stuff isn't read a lot. So if you're reading this, I love you for taking the time to do it :)