Advice For Aspiring Novelists

This is National Novel Writing Month. Across the world, thousands of people are furiously scribbling their tween-fang love epic, or their crime thriller about an attractive young body-language expert hired by MI5 to track a 21st Century Jack the Ripper copycat who targets promiscuous women in dance clubs, or their thriller about a young hacker fleeing for his life from a newly sentient Internet, or their retelling of Dune from the sand-worms’ perspective. I did my novel-in-a-month experiment last month and ended up with a first draft of a steampunk adventure for young adults that I am now too scared to read. But it was an enriching learning experience.

The volume of advice available on the web for aspiring novelists is quietly chilling. No, wait, I mean noisily chilling. The web provides a white hum of information on everything from plot development to naming your characters. Did any successful novelist ever need to subscribe to an ebook about naming their characters? How would Roald Dahl actually have responded to the spam-o-gram I got the other day?

“Uncover the Secrets of Writing a Kid's Classic QUICKLY!

Matt

Have you ever dreamed of writing a BEST-SELLING CHILDREN'S BOOK?

Imagine strolling into your local bookstore, and seeing your children's books lining the shelves. Children are reading, their imaginations sparkling. Your pride is bulging. And so is your bank balance! You're following in the footsteps of J.K.Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl, and many other popular children's authors.”

Imagine. You could spend a lot of time imagining. The industry that tells us how to write has now ballooned to compete in size with the industry that gives us things to read. Based on all the advice available, the secret to writing a breakthrough novel seems to be about keeping to a strict daily schedule: Rise early, collate your notes, name all of your characters, devise spreadsheet profiles for each, figure out where they went to school, or what they had for breakfast, re-arrange your desk, download an e-book on creating believable characters, colour-code your pens, Google “novel+structure,” stop the oven clock from blinking, get the temperature in the room to exactly 23 degrees, and plan a “brain-food” diet to optimise creativity. That way you can conceivably get to the end of the working day without having written a single thing.

National Novel Writing Month site