I love novels – both the writing and the reading of them – but having written a good half-dozen (three of which I've published), I think there are a few hard truths that writers need to know before embarking on one.
Truth #1: Writing a Novel is a Major Time Commitment
A novel isn't something you can dash off in a couple of weekends. While you'll hear about the occasional amazing feat of super-quick writing – particularly around NaNoWriMo -- the reality is that most novels take a long time to finish.
When I've talked to fellow writers, they often spend two, three, or more years on a novel, working on it in little bits around the rest of life. Obviously, if you're in a position to work on your novel full-time, you'll make much faster progress – but if you're not, then be prepared to work on it over a long period of time.
You're likely to put in more hours than you might think, too. Don't assume that because you can write a 1,000 word blog post in an hour that an 80,000 word novel is going to take 80 hours – there'll be a lot more thinking, planning, research, and rewriting involved.
If you'd like a bit of help with breaking down the process of writing a novel into manageable steps, check out my short ebook The Two Year Novel: Plan, Write, Edit and Publish Your Novel in 24 Months
You can get it absolutely free (as a newsletter member!) from your free ebooks library:
Password: alinewsletter
Truth #2: Your Novel is Unlikely to Make Much Money
Most novels don't make tens of thousands – or even thousands – of pounds. (Those that do tend to make the headlines, which might be why you've heard about them!) Most novelists, even ones published by mainstream publishing houses, don't make enough from their fiction to write full time.
Many novels, of course, don't get published at all. I wrote several that I later decided just weren't good enough to self-publish, or to seek representation for.
I'm definitely not suggesting you should give up now! There are loads of great reasons to write beyond "I want to make lots of money" – and you might want to check out my recent guest post on C.S. Lakin's blog, Live Write Thrive, for some more of my thoughts on that:
Truth #3: It's Surprisingly Hard to Do Well
The reason most novels don't make much money is because fiction is so hard to write really well. With most non-fiction, you need to be a competent, fluent writer ... but readers are focused on the information you're sharing. They're not going to be reading for your beautiful prose.
With fiction, you're up against all the other sources of entertainment that a reader might potentially choose instead. Novel-length fiction is particularly tough, because you need to balance lots of big picture stuff – like having a plot that ties together from start to end, and character arcs that are satisfying – with all the sentence-by-sentence details.
Back in 2011, I wrote a post on Aliventures looking at why fiction is so hard to write: almost eight years (and three novels plus a novella) further on, I still think it's really hard! Here's the post, if you're interested:
So those are the hard truths about novel writing. I hope I've not put you off too much, though ... because however hard writing a novel can be, I still think it's absolutely worth doing. (And cut yourself a bit of slack, too, if you're finding it tough.)
But ... it's still worth doing!
(If it's any consolation, it's also about a hundred times easier than having children. ;-))
There are some stories you can't easily tell in a shorter format. You want to explore characters and themes, and take readers into a different world – and that takes time and space.
Plus, it's a lot of fun to write a novel – and that's a perfectly good reason to do it!
So if you are about to start on a novel, or if you're part way through one, this is what I'd like to leave you with: if it's hard, if it's frustrating, if it feels like you've taken on something you can't handle, if it feels like you're falling short, if it's taking you way longer than you thought it should ... then all of that is normal.
You're not doing anything wrong: novels are just really hard. Keep at it, one page after another, and eventually you'll have a finished novel.
