Hey everyone thanks for joining me. I hope you are doing well. Continuing on my blog from book part 1. I covered a bit about starting a novel and how it can be a daunting task. Well it can be, and as I stated before if your heart isn’t in finishing chances are you won’t get a novel completed. You must decide on a topic or plot line that continues to inspire you throughout the whole story. It can be scary but exciting journey to take on. It took me over two months to decide what type of book I wanted to write, and again I didn’t start out just saying oh I want to write a novel. I wrote a novel after writing several short stories and poetry.
Each small project of writing, even a journal is a great step toward polishing a particular style. It can help expand your vocabulary, express yourself, and ignite your imagination to whole a new level. It gives you the challenge of figuring out how to twists your words to keep a reader glued to a page and making them walk through all the emotions of a character. There is so many positive things about writing, and a novel is no different even if you don’t get a million fans from a book, if you can touch the lives of a handful and maybe inspire them to change their life some how. That is the gift of any artist.
So once you start with an idea and you can picture your future characters doing all sorts of wild things across each page you manage to write, that is the first great step. It doesn’t matter if there is a few errors or things don’t read just right. It is the point of you enjoying what you are doing and it is benefitting you in some way. If you have an idea and you are feeling stuck on how to start there is no rush to feel pressured to dive right in. Try jotting out a few possible scenarios of how you want your story to start. Do you want action to capture the reader on the first page? Or just a gentle subtle loving feeling? Just consider how you want your characters and plot to be introduced.
From there just take it one day at a time, some writers take a year others take weeks to finish a project. It isn’t a race or competition if you don’t make it one. How did I start my own projects typically? It depends on the story or book. I often considered what type of plot I wanted, how many characters I wanted or want. What I wanted my characters to be like, how many chapters I want to try to push for. Some books require research if you want them to be more realistic, even a fiction book. Such as my latest book was based in Scotland and so I made sure to add a more realistic dialect to fit the culture. It all depends on what you want to write about, where , when and how. You can break your book into sections to help make the task less daunting. Such as breaking a 20 chapter book into five chapters each and deciding what exactly will happen in each section. Or if you have a short story that is twenty pages you can do the same. Decide what characters go in each section, what will happen to and around the characters. You can be as meticulous as you like and jot out every major scene of a story if you desire that. Or some writers completely wing their writing projects. It is all what you want to do with YOUR project. If it takes you six months or six years that is alright, you might end up with a best seller. Just take each step at a time and don’t let it overwhelm you no matter what.
If you are feeling like it is stressful or crowding you, that your words aren’t flowing freely then take a break go for a walk or take a break for a couple days to realign and focus. Rushing and forcing a project won’t typically end well, so just enjoy the journey and process let it flow and don’t worry about the outcome as you write. Editing comes after the final project and you can always change aspects and parts of a story then.
Take care and see you next time.
- Sterling
Project : N.K. Sterling 