Here are some more tips for writers on how to get your first novel out. It’s not just about creativity and imagination – it’s also about stamina, bloody-mindedness and keeping on going. Inevitably you’ll have other demands on your time, so how do you fit it all in, and stay the course till you get to the finishing post?
It is quite normal to have to work for a living as well as write. James Ellroy was a golf caddy. Sylvia Plath did shorthand (for a bit). William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks while working the night shift at a power plant – at least, that’s what he said later. (Writers! You can’t believe a word they say!) You may not be able to crank out a masterpiece at quite such a breakneck pace – I certainly couldn’t – but you can definitely push out a first draft if you work most evenings over the course of a year. I wrote pretty much all of Stop the Clock between the hours of nine and midnight, when my children were in bed.
Don’t worry if what comes out to start with doesn’t look all that great. Write secure in the knowledge that you will re-write. A novel is infinitely perfectible. The words you scribble down on your notepad can be reworked, polished up, transformed into e-book or printed page – but only if you’ve set them down in the first place. You may find longhand is better to start with. A keyboard gives rise to the temptation to edit as you go along.
Take notes. All kinds of writing are useful for getting you in the habit: dry-as-dust research reports, accounts of fetes and conferences, long, crazy love letters – it’s all exercise of one kind or another. If you’re not ready to commit to a novel, try short stories, a diary, a blog, flash fiction, whatever. Keep pen and paper to hand, because when you’re in the habit of writing phrases will present themselves to you at odd times. Don’t lose them. Write them down as fast as you can.
Don’t believe the spiel about the enemies of promise. This was a list dreamed up by Cyril Connolly, and it included the pram in the hall and journalism. It’s a funny, well-written essay. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
It’s nobler to try to make something than to knock it – even if you fail. It is always, always harder to create something than to destroy it. Don’t let meanness or indifference put you off. The act of putting pen to paper, regardless of outcome, is what counts. And as Brendan Behan says in Borstal Boy, F**k the begrudgers.
Remember, as the screenwriter William Goldman says repeatedly in Adventures in the Screen Trade, nobody knows anything. Be prepared to listen to advice, especially if it comes from someone whose judgement you trust. However, when it comes to your work, others may be able to offer a view or a steer, but ultimately, you are the one in charge. You decide. You judge. You choose. As a novice writer, you are simultaneously without status and magnificently powerful.
When you put your shoulder to the stone, something magical happens: forces conspire to help you shift it. When I was a student I interviewed the polar explorer Ranulph Fiennes, and he said that when you commit to an expedition, however impossible it seems, things fall into place to get you on your way. That can happen with novels, too.
If you find it difficult to get started, try writing in bed. Like reading in bed, it’s a way of tricking yourself into thinking that you are resting and indulging yourself, and about to go to sleep any minute. It worked for Proust…
Carry on reading. But don’t force yourself to read books you think you ought to. Read whatever you like, and plenty of it. If you feel stoppered up, try a page-turner. I read the Twilight saga when I was writing Stop the Clock in the hope that the flow of it would rub off. Read books that are similar to the one you want to write and see how they’re put together. Borrow other people’s tricks and make them your own.
Keep going. Music can be useful to psyche you up and push you on, just as it is (I believe) for runners. Be stubborn and bloody-minded. You will be peculiarly pleased with yourself when you get to the end.
Here are some more tips on how to write a novel in next to no time.