How Not to Write a Novel
When I was a kid, anything I did related to my novel was considered “working on my novel” even as I seemed to do everything and anything that was not writing. I created characters, drew the scenes in my head, filled out character questionnaires, talked about my book, and drew maps. All these things allowed me to develop the world in my book and exercise my creativity, but do you know what I was not doing in all that time? I was not writing.
Writing and developing a book is a huge undertaking. From working on a short story, a flash fiction piece, or a full-length novel, the act of writing is obviously the most important part. But there are things to plan, and ideas to develop outside of writing. For today’s weekly, I want to point out several ways you might be wasting your time in the lure of curtained productivity. You may be doing these things to work on your book but make sure you are continuing to write at the same time. There is a balance to be struck and an awareness that needs to be developed about how you spend your time and energy.
Writing and Productivity
As a writer, we might spend as much time avoiding writing as we do write. The best advice I have ever received was to literally force myself to sit down and write. No excuses—just write. With that advice, I was able to get my writing done and develop good habits to keep writing.
Now, down the rocky road that was me learning those habits, I learned of all the ways you can distract yourself from writing and tell yourself it is still productive. Before I dive in, let’s think of it this way…
Imagine you are a painter, and you have a project due in a week. You go out and buy your paints and the perfect colors. You get new brushes and decide to buy an organizer for all your new supplies. When you sit down to paint, you realize you want better paper, so you buy that too. Before you start to paint, you look up references and inspiration online and wander over to your favorite corner of Instagram and start scrolling for a few hours. At the end of the week, you are still doodling ideas—because you are planning—but you haven’t settled on one yet. You keep on planning and doodling but before you know it, you haven’t committed to anything and while you tell yourself, “I’m getting work done,” you aren’t getting your work done.
It’s easy to endlessly prepare for a project, backtrack, plan, and reroute, but as the deadline comes closer, you need to be aware of how you are spending your time. Instead of reorganizing your paintbrushes, you should be actively painting. Instead of looking for endless references, pick the few that fit and work with them. I know it is important to have your workspace organized, to have the perfect references, and more, but when it comes down to it, you need to plan how much time you will spend on those details before you start painting. Set a limit. Otherwise, you’ll never start your painting if you continue to procrastinate in this illusion of productivity.
All of this applies to writing. If you sit down to work on your book for two hours, plan to research or do these planning steps for 30 minutes. After those 30 minutes are up—start writing. If you write at a designated time every day, pick one or two days of the week when you work on your planning, designing, and small world-building details. On the other days, designate to writing time. This way, you won’t forget the most important step: writing.
Character Design
Online, there are scores of websites and games where you can create avatars and character designs for free. Using character design flash games—can get obsessive. There are many websites out there where you can create avatars and characters. You can change their eye, hair, and skin color. You can dress them up, pick backgrounds, and even give them props or different poses. This is amazing to design characters but spending hours agonizing over the details and designing every character from your main cast to someone who appears only once in your book might not be a good use of time.
It’s a great rabbit hole to jump into and lose a lot of time but there were many days when I created dozens of avatars as a kid and felt satisfied that thinking about my book meant I was working on it. But at the end of the day, did I have any writing to show for it? I did not. Did it help the process of creating my book? No, not really. I can make 500 avatars and still have no book to show for it.
Drawing your own characters: This is key to my process. But not necessary. Instead of using important writing time, I recommend setting aside separate art and writing time. Make it two different activities so you don’t lose your writing time.
Character Questionnaires
There are free resources online with lists of questions to fill out about your original characters. Sheets often feature 20, 50, to 200 questions about your character’s personality, physical appearance, beliefs, likes, and dislikes. While some questions are important (if they apply to your story,) I can’t stand these. I know so many people love them, but I believe they are the biggest example of wasting a lot of writing time. Of course, I understand if this is important to your process, but I think some questions are not necessary. Does knowing your character’s favorite color affect their personality and role in your book? Does knowing what food they like to eat when they are watching their favorite TV show matter? No! Yes, you might want to know everything about your character (and I get that) but knowing all these tiny details will not change the plot of the book or the outcome. If you want them, go ahead and slip them in, but unless knowing a character’s favorite brand of Lays being pickle-flavored somehow impacts them saving the world, I don’t think it’s worth your time and energy racking your brain over these traits.
Are there important things to know about your character? Absolutely! Just make sure anything you plan or plot about them has a direct impact on the plot, story, and the character’s actions. If not, I wouldn’t include it or waste your time planning it.
There are questionnaires that do ask important questions such as my favorites:
What does your character want?
Why can’t they get it?
What are they willing to do to get it?
But once the questions start getting so detailed and miniscule, be aware of what is needed in your story or not, so you don’t waste your time making up all this information.
Picking the Perfect Writing Program
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked for recommendations on what writing program to use or if I use Scrivener or not. While I wish I could answer better than this, or if I could give good advice on the topic, I usually say, “I don’t know,” or that I do not use any special programs.
Writing can be simple. Writing can be complicated. There are many ways to organize your projects (and I’ve been told that’s the benefits and advertisements of certain programs) but in the end, writing is writing. You can write on paper, or you can write on Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or some other equivalent. You do not need a fancy program to get started or to help you along (unless they truly work for you.) Subscribing to programs can get expensive too and whenever someone tells me I must have certain programs and apps to be a writer, it always reminds me of the fisherman who buys three different kinds of poles, top-notch waders, two tackleboxes full of new lures, and goes out to fish for the first time in their life. Focus on the simple part. Get one lure and one pole—pick up your pencil and grab a piece of paper and see what you can do. All those other additions are not necessary and don’t let not having them stop you from starting.
Conclusion
All these points listed above are just things to be aware of. If anything you do is similar to what I list, if it is important to your process—keep it! I’m not recommending anyone stop doing these things or avoid them. I am only suggesting boundaries as you eliminate wasted time and evaluate what is the most important for you to be working on. In the end, be aware of what potentially wastes your time or what is productive. Getting the writing done is the most important part. When you start a new project there is a lot of planning to do and some of the topics above may help with that but be sure your planning has a deadline, and the physical act of writing is your biggest focus.
Do successful writers and published authors do any of these things? Sure! Everyone has a different process and different techniques might help one person more than another. I am only here to point out the need for an awareness of how you spend your time while working on your book. The key to finishing your book is to actually write it. Just be sure these fancy things are not stopping you from writing.
Best,
Danni Lynn, Evangeline40003