Novel: The Reluctant Scribe – Page 6

Learning from mistakes: writing my new novel

My old novel had been a monster that had threatened to eat me alive. The new novel was going to be different. I was going to tame the beast before it got the better of me.

Giving up is hard

A couple of months ago I gave up on a novel I had been trying to write for a few years. I analysed what had gone wrong and listed some of the problems in a blog post: Why I Abandoned My Novel .

Giving up was a difficult decision to make and I spent some time convincing myself I was doing the right thing. In writing – as in anything in life – making mistakes is OK. This is how we learn. To stay cheerful, I found a great collection of quotes on learning from mistakes and many of these quotes come from some very good writers. Continue reading “Learning from mistakes: writing my new novel”

5 year writing project: get a novel published

I started writing during NaNoWriMo in November 2011. The words just flew onto the page. 50,000 in a month. Easy! But come December, I had lost my steam.

Should you ever abandon a novel?

I have been writing a novel for 3 years. It is a great story. I know the characters well. The finished product is clear in my mind.

I started writing during NaNoWriMo in November 2011. The words just flew onto the page. 50,000 in a month. Easy!

But come December, I had lost my steam. I started going back and fiddling. Now some of the early chapters looked pretty good. But I lost my forward momentum. And I got finally bogged down about two-thirds of the way through. I guess I hit what is often known as the “soggy middle”.

Now, all the standard advice goes like this: just finish it. It doesn’t matter what sort of mess you have written, you can knock it into shape during the editing stage. Continue reading “5 year writing project: get a novel published”