Hey all you young scribes, I’ve got good news for you. You already have the most important element you need to write a novel. How do I know that without knowing you? ‘Cause you’re reading this. The most important element is want-to.
That was me when I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I wasn’t a very good student. Parents and teachers didn’t know much about ADD or ADHD (pretty much the same thing) back then, so I thought the reason I couldn’t concentrate was that I wasn’t smart. I had a hard time getting through a story that wasn’t interesting to me, which was true about most of the stories teachers gave me to read in school. But then I discovered when they assigned a story that did interest me, I’d get completely lost in it. I loved writing that made me laugh. I loved writing that made me cry, or get angry.
Then it hit me! I wanted to write stories that made other people feel those things.
If you’re at all like me, it’s hard to get started. You’ll think of a good idea, start writing and get stuck, at which point you might decide it was a dumb idea. But if you thought it was a good idea in the first place, it probably was. You just didn’t think it through. That’s a good time to stop and see if you can decide how you want it to end.
Sometimes it’s hard to make that decision by just sitting there thinking, which makes it a good time to talk about it with friends, particularly other writers, but anyone who might really be interested. Talk about possibilities, some of which will be worth considering, some of which you’ll know right away, wouldn’t work.
Again, if you’re like me you’ll get stuck a lot. We all know that as “writer’s block.” If you’re blocked for long, walk away. The longer you stare at the paper, or the computer screen, the more blocked you’ll be. Your mind is a very flexible thing, in that it works when you don’t know it’s working. It helps me to move, because my mind tends to move with me.
My last piece of advice…write it all the way to the end before going back to “fix” things. You have just a month, so you don’t want to get caught messing around with some small part to get it perfect at the cost of not finishing. It’s easier to “fix” when you have the whole thing in front of you. I tend to overwrite; explain more than I need to, use too many words. It’s easier to see my errors when I have them all right out there in front of me.
Good luck! This is an adventure!
-Chris
Chris’s bio: Been writing since 1982 when reptiles ruled. Fifteen books published, fourteen of them banned. Hey, nobody’s perfect. I’m introduced as a writer for boys who don’t read. That’s like being a car maker for people who don’t drive!