How to Write a Novel

A dear friend who really saw me sent me a free subscription to Anu Garg’s A-Word-A-Day many years ago. I still read him every day. At the end of each word, which comes with pronunciation, etymology, definition, examples, and even an illustration, he always adds a quote by someone whose birthday is that day.

This is a quote by author and journalist Cory Doctorow whose birthday is July 17th via A-Word-A-Day:

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.

As I’ve gotten older, I really don’t like to drive at night, but I do it when I must. What Mr. Doctorow has said, however, is one hundred percent true—both about driving at night and about writing a novel.

At this point in my fiction writing life, I’ve completed eight Mex Mysteries and one Butch-Femme Romance. I’m in the middle of the next Mex, called Rent Rx—about the musical Rent, and the first of a series of four romances, called Her.

For Mex, I’m given the show, usually the decedent but not always, the spiritual practice, the social issue, and the personal aspect of the story. For Rent Rx, it’s Rent, some general notion of who dies but no specifics yet, the labyrinth, the opioid epidemic generally with a focus on heroin addiction and HIV/AIDS, and Mex connecting with her True Love.

These are, if you will, the scaffolding on which the novel hangs. Another way to say it, to stretch Mr. Doctorow’s metaphor: these are the asphalt, the yellow lines, the white line, the shoulder, and any signs I can manage to read in the dark by the light of my headlights. When driving at night, I usually know where I’m going. I know I’ll be driving on a road. I also know that if I’ll keep going, I’ll get to where I want to be.

It’s the same with fiction writing for me. There are some “tricks” I use to keep me focused. For one, I never, ever stop at the end of a chapter. I always write a paragraph or two of the next chapter so that when I show up at the page the next day, I know my next destination. The end of a chapter feels too “final” to me, and I want to make sure I stay on the road.

I have a blank calendar form that I duplicate religiously and put in the notebook I keep for each book. I usually fill it out with page numbers on the days as I fill the time span of the story, but always, always, always, at some point, I get so wrapped up in the story that I forget to do the calendar. Then a few weeks later I wake up in an utter panic one morning certain I’ve screwed up the timeline.

That’s the day I start at the beginning of the manuscript and read it straight through to wherever I stopped. Often I find I’ve skipped a day of the week, or skipped over a whole week, or I wake up on a Tuesday and it’s Thursday by bedtime because I’m eager to get to whatever point I want to make. So far, the fixes have been easy—whew. 

Mostly I think I show up at the page, behind the keyboard/steering wheel, on the road to a finished novel because I want to find out how they get to the result I am beginning to see as I write. It feels like there’s a room in my computer that houses each novel and that once I find the Rent room, I just have to start to type because I’m on the road and I want to see the scenery a.k.a. the plot.

What I’m always certain of is that Mex will solve the case, that the solve will come through the guidance of Spirit via the spiritual method in the book, that the lyrics will play a significant part in the solve, that she’ll learn something about herself and her lover, and that there’ll be a next Mex Mystery, in this case, Christmas Presence.

What’s even more amazing about this to me is that this is exactly how we are wired to create our own reality. We don’t know how because we don’t have to know how. What we definitely have to know is what we want. Once we know that, and get excited about it, the how reveals itself in our daily living and choices.

So if you’re writing fiction or creating a life, choose what you want—a completed novel or a seaside cottage—get in the car and let those headlights show you how to get what you want.

Happy writing. Happy living.

P. S. One of the things I’ve discovered over the years of talking to younger, newbie-er writers is that what’s usually stopping them is an idea of how the process is supposed to go. Take a page out of Elsa’s book, and let it go, sweetie. Just write your book.