How I Wrote Two Full-Length Novels in 18 Months
My debut novel , Biographies of Common People: Volume 1: 1989–2000, is out on May 23, 2017. The sequel, which covers 2004-2016, is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2018.
I wrote the first chapter of Tom. 1 in the last week of July 2015. I wrote the last chapter of Tom. 2 in the last week of December 2016. Two feature-length novels – about 90,000 words each – written in eighteen months, plus I edited Volume. 1 while I was composing Volume. 2 .
If you’ve dreamed of writing your own novel (s), but haven’t written anything but the first two chapters yet – and believe me I was there – you are probably wondering how I did all of this, other than my daily work and everything. the rest of the things that are needed in life.
This is partly due to experience. I was able to write Biographies of Everyday People in part because I have already written hundreds of blog posts, online articles, and short fiction.
But a lot of it came down to structure and planning.
Construction of the structure
The NaNoWriMo model, as much as I love her, does not suit me. I already write roughly 50,000 words every month as a freelancer, and doubling my workload is not an option.
So, when I started sketching and planning Biographies of Normal People , I gave it a structure that I knew could:
- Please write in addition to my current workload.
- Maintain over time.
I decided to keep the chapters short. Roughly 1,200-2,000 words each, or the length of a freelance article. Some writers like to finish their day-to-day work in mid-sentence so that they can jump straight to the next day; I have been practicing David Allen’s book ” How Everything Is Done” for ten years, and open loops are just spinning in my brain. I could not stop mid-sentence. I couldn’t even stop halfway through the chapter. So I made sure I could finish a draft chapter in one evening.
(Plus, I already knew how to write with those 1,200 to 2,000 words. I knew how rhythms should go, and I knew how to get people to read.)
I also decided to set a chapter limit: each volume will be divided into two parts, and each part will consist of 35 chapters. (Volume 1 of Biographies of Common People begins on Rosemary Gruber’s 35th birthday; Volume 2 ends on her daughter Meredith Gruber’s 35th birthday.) I’ve outlined the main event in each chapter to make sure both books have the right amount refunds and falling action and that I never sit down to a chapter not knowing what to write next .
Finally, I decided to write two chapters a week. This gave the project both workload and duration. It would take 70 weeks to write 140 chapters, although I gave myself one week off after every 35 chapters during which I edited and revised my outline for the next 35 chapters. This meant that my time to completion was closer to 74 weeks.
It helped that I had written a novel earlier. This novel was called The Red Book of Cordia, and it was about a bunch of quirky characters who came together to fight an evil empire (I just finished playing Final Fantasy VI ) , and I wrote it when I was in high school. It took me two years. It wasn’t a very good novel, but the fact that I completed it meant that I knew how to sustain a large creative project for years – and I could probably do it again.
Having a background
Here I must mention why I used the word “probably”. It has been 17 years since I graduated from high school, and since then I have tried to write half a dozen novels, including several chapters from Biographies of Common People, which have gone nowhere.
I was defeated every time. So why will things be different this time?
You know how they say that writers should write short stories before writing novels, and many writers ignore this because they only read novels and are not interested in shorter fictions?
I started writing in 2012.
Between 2012 and 2015, I wrote many short fictions .
Some of them were articles for Wing World or Popular Science . Some of these were first-person blog posts for The Write Life or The Billfold . But I also wrote fiction – Sending the Martian Widow for The Yearbook , From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall for SparkLife , How the Gilmore Girls Make Money for the Wallet .
I studied character, voice and structure, I spent my 10,000 hours , I raised my level – whatever you call it, I did it. I was writing all the time and my work and my processes were improving.
(I’ve read a lot of books as well, but I’ve always read a lot of books. I’ll just add that because reading is one of the most important skills of a writer.)
So when I finally decided to start writing Biographies of Ordinary People , after years of wanting – and trying – to write it, I felt ready. I had both the skills and the practice to be successful. I had three years of experience in communicating ideas, writing compelling stories, and meeting deadlines. I got paid to write my story, and people told me how much they liked it.
In other words: I consistently wrote 14 articles per week for five freelance clients. I could add two more chapters.
Finding my readers
My career as a freelance writer and editor taught me two things:
- I love the immediate gratification from the readers.
- I love getting paid for my work.
I wanted the same experience with Biographies of Common People . Over the course of my freelance career, I had many readers, and I knew that many of those readers were interested in my fiction, so I created a Patreon project that would allow people to read and respond to drafts of Everyday People’s Biographies chapters. as I. wrote to them in exchange for a small monthly bond.
It worked great. I had a group of readers, I had financial support, and most importantly, I had an early validation of the novel’s viability. Did my readers like this? Did they want to know what happened next? Did they empathize with the characters and did they react emotionally?
(I was even able to make some adjustments to the course based on reader reactions, which helped improve the novels.)
Knowing that I already had a readership and that people were willing to pay for this story also gave me the edge as I began to explore different paths to publish. I ended up going down the self-publisher path for reasons I detail here , which meant I could get both novels published within a year, and also meant that by the time we got to Vol. 2 , readers will receive a book set in the recent past.
At this point, I am assuming that some of you are ready to start planning your own novels, while the rest are skeptical if my book is a good one. (It’s too structured! It’s self-published! It should have gone through years of fixes!) Here’s a five-star foreword review by Clarion Reviews :
(It’s good that I almost have the second volume, so I can continue to develop the momentum of the first.)
So write your books, whether you write them like mine, or choose a completely different tactic to go from the first word to the 90 thousandth. But keep in mind that, at least in this case, building the structure and setting up a robust workload helped me complete my project. That, and the first to write a lot of short works.