Chapter 1
Entering the Writerâs World
In This Chapter
Appraising yourself and your motivation
Getting to know your reader
Writing a novel isnât like assembling a flat-pack wardrobe. Itâd be much easier if it were. Youâd be able to lay out all your words and ideas on the floor, check the instructions, and make sure you had everything you needed. Then youâd just follow the steps, and at the end of it youâd have built a novel. Easy.
But writing a novel isnât like that. The process is different for every writer, although that isnât the same as saying that everyoneâs experience is completely different. Much of the process is common to many writers. But the most important part of your writing experience is unique to you.
The problem is that, unlike assembling a wardrobe, when you write a novel you donât have a blueprint. Thereâs no set of instructions you can look at and say, âAh, I see what itâs going to look like when itâs finished, hereâs a box of all the things I need, and I see clearly how Iâm going to put the pieces together.â There are guide books, like this one, which can help by showing you how other people have met the same challenges you face. But the bottom line is that no one else can write your novel for you.
The key concepts to keep in mind as you write your novel and think about getting it published are:
- Never give up â never stop writing.
- Never stop reading and finding out about your craft.
- Have faith in what youâre trying to do, but always be prepared to consider the possibility that you may be on the wrong track.
- Trust the process.
Knowing Yourself
Knowing yourself means being honest about yourself and your situation. When you know yourself, you know what your avoidance strategies are likely to be, and so you can prepare for them.
You have to know yourself to know whether youâre capable of doing the things you have to do in order to write your novel. Can you, for example, say to your friends, âIâm not coming out with you just now; Iâll meet you later, when Iâve finished this chapterâ? Can you leave phones unanswered, all forms of social media unchecked? Can you say to the people you live with, âIâm going to shut myself away for a couple of hours nowâ? Can you do that even though theyâre settling down to watch a film you want to see? And if they say youâre boring and no fun and theyâre going out without you, can you laugh that off?
Can you make writing one of the good things in your life, instead of a drudge that needs to be avoided except when you really feel like it, which is, letâs face it, about once a week? Most importantly, can you arrange your life so that you have time for writing every day or almost every day? Can you treat writing like lunch: you sit down and eat lunch every day, and it wouldnât occur to you not to except in the most unusual circumstances. Thatâs how you need to see your writing. Can you, honestly, see yourself doing that? And if you canât, can you train yourself to do it? Even when youâre tired, when youâre having a bad day, when you just donât feel like it? Because thatâs what the authors of the published novels you read and enjoyed did. They didnât wait until the mood overtook them and then dash off a few golden chapters. They sat down and slogged, just like you. Thatâs what successful writing takes.
Knowing Your Reader
Your reader doesnât owe you a living, or even a second glance. The only way you can get readersâ interest is by giving them the best possible book you can. How do you do that? Read this book for a start.
Beyond that, you need to make sure that you know who your readers are. A book aimed at party-loving young women working in the media in London isnât going to be the same book as one aimed at retired men living in rural Sussex. At least, probably not. (If you can write a book that appeals to both, we know some publishers who want to talk to you!) Know who your readers are, and make sure that you address them.
Who is your reader? The easy answer is, âSomeone quite a lot like me,â and thatâs not a bad start. If you like reading trashy science fiction, and you write trashy science fiction, your readerâs someone like you who likes what you like.
However, presumably you want to attract people who like other things, too, people who are going to read your novel and then say, âWell, I donât normally read this sort of thing, but this isnât just a trashy science fiction novel, it has a wonderful romantic story, it made all sorts of interesting points about politics, and it made me completely reconsider my attitude to the death penalty. Oh, and it had a great recipe for beetroot soup.â We exaggerate, but you take the point. A book with this sort of wide appeal is called a crossover novel and is the publishersâ Holy Grail. Write one of these books and everyone gets rich. (A good example of one of these is The Time Travellerâs Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Vintage).)
So, who is the crossover reader? Presumably someone open to different experiences. Beyond that, itâs hard to say. Who is a Harry Potter reader? You may reply, âboys and girls aged 8â14 with a taste for adventureâ, but we all know that the appeal of these books goes way beyond that.
How do you target your reader? You donât, at least not at the writing stage. You write the book that you want to write. Then, when you submit the manuscript, your agent and/or your publisher may well say something like, âI love it, really love it. Just a couple of suggestions. The romance is really nice, but can it be a bit more intense? And the battle is over a bit too quickly; Iâd have liked it to go on a bit longer, with maybe a climactic single combat.â And so on. These people know the publishing market; they make a judgement as to where your book should be aimed and try to push you in that direction, as necessary. (Of course, you donât have to agree with them.)
Keep the picture of your general reader while writing. âA 14-year-old boy who goes to grammar school and lives in Edinburghâ is too specific. âAnyone who likes an exciting adventure story and whoâs interested in boats but isnât too bothered about romanceâ is the kind of picture to paint at this stage.
You arenât writing for yourself. Of course, you have to like your book, but never forget about your reader. If you ever think, âOh, to be honest thatâs not really as good as I can get it, but Iâm not going to worry about making it right,â or âIâm tired; the heck with that bit, itâs a muddle, but I canât be bothered to fix it,â your readerâs going to notice and wonât forgive you. Your book must always be as good as you can make it. No compromises.
Remembering that Writing Is Editing
Creative writing isnât actually what novelists do. What this book encourages you to do is creative re-writing.
Writing a novel â putting about 90,000 words on paper â takes you about three months if you write three pages â about 1,000 words â a day. Writing a finished novel can take you anything from three months to thirty years. Fortunately, it doesnât take that long for most people, but it can still easily take a year or so.
That extra nine months is spent re-writing: shaping, changing, re-ordering, re-phrasing, honing, and polishing â over and over again, until your novelâs as good as it possibly can be.
The process is no different to creating a sculpture: you can make the vague shape of a javelin-thrower relatively quickly â a lump about six feet tall, a long thin bit at the top, maybe standing on two smaller lumps for feet. Then you start the real work: the chipping, shaping, sanding and so on â the editing and polishing.
Writing is all about getting the details right.
Entering the Market
We arenât going to pretend that getting a publishing deal for your novel is easy. Over 180,000 books were published in 2013 in the UK alone. Of those, very few become sales successes. Itâs impossible to say for sure what percentage of novels that are written end up getting published, but itâs fair to say that, all other things being equal, the odds of you becoming a bestselling author arenât good. Fortunately, all other things donât have to be equal.
So, what can be done to better the odds? Read this book for a start. Weâve gathered together a lot of advice for you on what to write, how to write it, and how to get what you write noticed by the people who count.
Part V has loads more information about getting published. In Part V, you can also find a thorough introduction to the world of self-publishing. Even if you canât interest a publisher in your novel, you can still find readers online. Nearly as many books were self-published in the UK in 2013 as were published by traditional publishers. You still need to work hard on being discovered, but we have tips for that too.
Steeling yourself
Getting your novel published calls for clear-eyed realism and absolute honesty with yourself. If you think that getting a novel published is easy, youâre just plain wrong. You have to deal with the publishing market as it really is, not how you would like it to be. This reality means never being too proud to learn. It means doing research and whatever needs to...
