Getting Off The Ground
In this month of November, I see that there are many colleagues and friends on Medium starting out to do just that in National Novel Writing Month
I have written a novel, and I am pleased with my first attempt at self-publishing a debut work. But, having a group of supporters around you is just the beginning of this process. I was part of a small writers’ group to begin with. We met face-to-face in our homes.
We all had different springboards for writing our stories. Mine was writing about my parents’ meeting and they’re starting a family in a country setting in post-war times. Write what you know! some say (Or not!). I wrote what I knew about. Others might start with a character or with a setting, or an imagined idea in mind. It differs for all of us.
The Micro Level
In the beginning, it was all about correctness issues to do with grammar, punctuation, and just “getting it down” that concerned us as a group. We wrote while always being aware of our grammar, style, and spelling issues. This is what I call the micro level: Writing from the word up (and from the sentence level up, to extend it slightly).
During group feedback on our pieces, this is also what we focused on: Issues of grammar and spelling correctness. We each shared one thousand words among our group. This seemed to be the maximum number of words that enabled us to correct all these minute issues.
After one year, I had the gist of a novel ready to be shown. Part of my brain had been in consort with me all the time while writing the story. But what a mess it was! I had to go back to the storyboard and look at the big picture next.
The Bigger Picture of Writing a Novel
There is another level to the process of writing a novel that needs to be considered: questions of structure, overall themes, point of view, genre, plot, and voice have to be thought about at some stage of the writing process. And the sooner the better…
If you can be aware of these issues, even while writing the first draft, you might find it easier to arrive at the finished product. Certainly, by the second draft, your attention must be focused here, rather than on the minutiae of the smaller elements.
I have researched these issues and have blogged about them on my personal blog: The Art of Creative Writing. It’s free and you are welcome to take a glimpse.
Keep in mind that there is no one way to go about writing a novel. Some writers like to work from the sentence up, and that is fine, too. But most of us require assistance with questions to do with structure. It’s the elephant in the room for a lot of us writers, once we finish the first draft. I found it difficult to hold the whole novel that I had written in my mind’s hand, once I had finished the first draft. And it wasn’t ready to be shown to an editor.
The Two Parameters
If you can keep in mind the small and the larger elements — the micro and the macro issues – to do with writing a novel, even from early on, you are halfway there to writing a successful novel.
I wish you all good luck with your voyage! It’s an exciting one, and not to be taken on lightly. We are all heroes on this journey, like Homer and his The Odyssey.
Take Away: Rather than thinking about writing posts or articles online, you might be ready to consider writing a longer genre: a novel, a short story, or a creative memoir. And you may now need to think about creative writing issues, such as those to do with genre, voice, point of view, structure and plot. Certainly, correctness of grammar and spelling are still important. But the macro elements to do with structuring a longer work might prove to be a greater challenge. I try to summarize these topics here and offer further examples from my personal blog to expand upon them.
