How to Write a Novel (or Not to)

Six months ago, I started writing, I didn’t expect what I was writing would actually turn into something that is something like a novel. One of the reasons that I started writing was because of the move that I was going through. My family and I moved from my small little hometown in Connecticut, into a smaller town in Massachusetts. During the move and selling the house, I didn’t want to move, I didn’t even want to think about moving. To express my feelings, and not blowing up at my mother I started writing, within the past six months I have writing over 136 pages in this book. It mainly just started from my thinking ‘hey wouldn’t it be a cool idea to write a novel?’ Don’t get me wrong it is a cool idea, but there is a lot of work that goes into it. I’ve broken my novel up into three parts, and it’s more of a fictitious memoir, then a novel.

Within the three sections (50 pages at minimum) the main character Caelyn goes from hating moving, hating the new town, into loving the new town, and she becomes glad that she moved. I’ve only finished two parts of the story, and I’m working on the last section, but my mom decided that we should go through some sentence structure and paragraphs, Yay! (Not really). I have to admit that I stink no suck at spelling and language arts as a whole; it’s always been my downfall even in 1st and 2nd grade. If it wasn’t for spell check right now, you might be looking at some words and thinking ‘what is this girl on?!’ Needless to say, the editing of my novel is harder than I thought, mom and I are going through about 112 pages for only the two finished sections, and then we have about another 50 pages to complete after I finish the last section. I highly recommend when writing a story know sentence structure, and how to spell . . . It helps . . . A lot!

Now I’m not a famous writer who’s blogging just for the heck of it, but I will give some of those aspiring writers out there some tips, that I have learned throughout the past six months.
1. Know Sentence Structure (It helps!)

2. Write when you have muse, I’ve had days that I’ve written for hours on end, and other where I just can’t think of one paragraph to write.

3. Write in paragraphs, not sentences, you want the story to flow, so instead of writing ‘The Cat ate. The Cat went outside’, write ‘The fat black cat, sat at his window and ate his food. Once he was done he hopped down with a loud ‘thud’ and went outside.’ Which one do you like better?

4. There will be a lot of edits, editing isn’t a onetime deal, you may need to go over it 6 or 7 times, before you even send it into an editor

5. Set yourself a Goal (I only know this from Girl Scouts), for example I have to make a SMART Goal for my Gold Award in Girl Scouts, and I incorporated my story into one of the SMART Goals, SMART Goal: By January 1st 2010 I will have finished the half of the last part in my novel, by writing at least 3 pages a day to get half way through the last part of my novel so that I can get one step closer to revising it and hopefully publishing it. The SMART Goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timey

6. Have a rough draft of your story, before you go into writing it, unlike me who didn’t really think about it until my mom asked me. For example my Novel is called Moving as a Teenager;;My Life;;Told By Me, it is broken into three 50 page sections Section One: Connecticut-CT is about Caelyn learning she is moving, and absolutely hates it! Section Two: Connecticut to . . . To. . To. . . –CT to. . .to . . To . . . is about Caelyn living in MA, but wanting her life in CT to be there more, she becomes a bitch to her family, and says that she hates it here. Section Three: Massachusetts- MA is when Caelyn learns that MA isn’t that bad, she finds things in her life that make her realize that she has two lives, one in CT, and one in MA, but she likes the MA one better.

7. When you are given critiques, don’t get upset, they’re there to help you! I only know this from personal knowledge, I have a way of getting worked up when people critique me or something that I have accomplished

8. Ignore that Word Count! If you are writing and just can’t stop, ignore the word count, don’t look at the word count until you are done for the day, or done with the piece that you have written, for me all my sections are roughly over 50 pages, I didn’t look at the section CT until around 60/70 pages in.

9. You can do it! No matter what people say you can do it! Don’t let them stop you, just keep on doing it, eventually your writing will be finished, and you can show the doubters that look you finished it despite what they said! Quote to help: “There’s always going to be another mountain I’m always going to want to make it move Always going to be an uphill battle, Sometimes I'm going to have to lose,”

10. Focus, for me focus comes with music, when I sit down and plan to write me story for at least an hour, I turn on the local radio station, or open up I-tunes.

11. To make your story more interesting add in little things from your hometown. For example my hometown has a coffee shop called Perk on Main, I featured Perk On Main (with permission from the owner) in my story, Perk became the place where Caelyn goes to hang out.

12. Go for the Gold! You might finish editing and everything, and think ‘oh well, it’s not that good.’, don’t let it take space up in your computer, bring it to an editor, send it to a publisher, you never know your book just might be what that one publisher is looking for!

I hope that if you’re writing a story that you continue, if you’re not writing one you might want to, or if you’re publishing one that these hints might have helped, but just remember “There’s always going to be another mountain”, so don’t give up.

By: C

P.S. there are 1,141 words in this post P: