North York Central Library Blog

7 QUICK TIPS to Consider Before You Start the Long Haul

Or Warnings Before You Write Your Novel

1. If you’re going on a long journey, you’ll need a map. It doesn’t need to have every pit stop, detour, road name and address on it, but it does need to have a beginning, a route and an ending you think you’d like to see. Of course, the best road trips involve highway diners, casinos in the desert, and selfies in front of giant chairs and plastic lumberjacks statues, but eventually you need to get back out on the road.
2. Know your characters. Write back-stories for them that don’t necessarily need to make it into the text. What do they like, dislike, do when they’re alone? If you need to spend a long time with someone you need to try to figure out their motives. That’s not to say they won’t change- the best characters do, just know them when you first set off together.
3. Keep everything! When you cut a piece out of the text, put it in a separate folder on your desktop. (I completed a book of short stories out of one of these ‘cut folders’.)
4. Get the f#%& off Facebook. And Twitter, and Instagram and stay off the gossip sites. The Internet- while sometimes a useful research tool- is a major time-suck for anyone who spends their days at the computer. You know what’s a good research tool besides the tempting internet? The library. Get here.
5. Be brave. Forget that someone might read this at the end and that that someone may or may not be your mother Write it all out, get it all down, and then edit the goofy sex scenes and too-gory tangents out later. (Or leave them in and tell your mother your friend wrote those pieces…)
6. Read. Read. Read. Read diverse, read up, read down, read new, read weird, read foreign, read domestic, read newspapers (unless they’re online- too easy to click to check on your profile). Just read. Writing a novel is a long trip and you’re going to need a lot of fuel to get where you need to go, my friend.
7. Prepare to be underwhelmed at times. Some days are fire-from-your-fingertips, magic-in-the-sky, possessed-by-Hemingway fantastic! Other days are 11 cups of coffee, two lines, one name change and pages of doodled comics with stickmen jumping off bridges. And that’s okay. It happens to the best of us, champ. Watch some TV, read some Lydia Davis and get to bed early. Because you damn well will be back at it bright and early tomorrow. Someone’s gotta catch the fire in their fingertips, might as well be you.