This post is a very practical one — when working on a longer piece, such as a novel, how does one maintain a strong sense of momentum and avoid getting frustrated?
I admit this is something I’ve struggled with. I’m currently working on the first draft of a Novel called All the Wonders, which I have projected will be about 80,000 words long. Since I’m not the fastest writer in the world, this will take me around six months to complete.
I’m reminded of one of my favourite quotes from Stephen King. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Mr. King remarks that writing a novel can sometimes feel like “crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub”. In my case, six months represents a whole lot of time to get bogged down and feel like I’m not making any progress at all.
I’ve attempted two previous novels, and many times while working on them I felt that I was not just making little progress, but actually going backwards, as I deleted and re-wrote swaths of story. This time around I knew I needed new methods for not just maintaining forward momentum, but feeling like I was moving forward and not just splashing around in place.
Below are the steps I’ve taken in my current work. I hope that these prove helpful for other aspiring and struggling writers:
- I created a spreadsheet to quantify my progress. As a software engineer, I’m used to working on projects that take months or even years to complete, and I’ve never worked on a software team that didn’t track that progress on a weekly or daily basis. So, I thought, why not track my progress on a novel in the same manner? I record my daily word count in the spreadsheet, and it calculates my rolling daily word count average. Based on my goal of 80,000 words and my rolling word count average, it also calculates roughly when I should be finished. This serves not only to keep me on track, but it also helps me not feel too badly when I can’t write one day because I have other commitments, as it instantly displays the impact of the time off, which is usually minimal over the course of six months. When I have good days, I get the satisfaction of seeing that timeline snap back into form.
- I began editing my writing every day. This is something I picked up from being in the Jerry Jenkins Writing Guild. I start every writing day by editing what I wrote the day before. This does a few things. It gives me more confidence that my writing at least follows some logic and is not total schlock. It gives me an easy place to start every morning. And it gets me into the writing mindset. I’ve been doing this for a few months now, and I think I’m going to keep it up because so far it’s worked well.
- I posted my first draft for the world to see. This one is a little more controversial. I decided to regularly post my rough first-draft on my website, with public Facebook posts to make people aware of its existence. I let anyone who cares to look make comments on the work-in-progress. I did this for two reasons: it alleviates the feeling that I’m never going to have the guts to show anyone what I’m writing, kind of like jumping straight into a cold lake instead of dipping a toe. And it spurs me to continue writing, since presumably people are reading and expecting the next chapter. I would NOT recommend this for everyone, and I am not even sure I’m going to take this approach with any other novels I write. It is very much an experiment at this point. I promise that once I’m through with this public first draft I will write a blog covering how it went.
Well, that’s it. So far I’ve found points 1 and 2 indispensably effective in keeping me on track and feeling (somewhat) good about what I’m putting on the page. The jury is still out, of course, on point 3, but as stated, I’ll keep you informed.
Every writer is different, so these approaches may or may not work for you. But if you’re stuck and feeling that you’re rowing that bathtub of yours in circles, why not give them a try? You never know what might do the trick for you.
