I wanted to share something I learned during my latest edit: writing a novel is daunting. This sounds obvious to a lot of people, but I took it for granted. Yes, I’ve been working on this novel a long time. Yes, I’ve worked through five drafts previously. Yes, I have a TON of information in my head about this book. So you would think that the manuscript of a world I created and have been submerged in this long would be more like an old friend.
You would be wrong.
When I sat down to edit down my 167k behemoth with one of my key goals to cut the word count in half, I tried to get my arms around the whole project. Yeah, I tried to hug it out with my novel. But novels are squirrely things. The characters within like to yell at you and sometimes ignore you and the settings are living, breathing things. And so, as squirrely things have a tendency to do, this squirrely thing got away from me.
That was until I realized the way my brain works. I’m an Achiever by nature. I’m an INTJ, an Architect in the Myers-Briggs universe. I like to set up all the dominoes in secret and watch as people are surprised by the shape they make as they fall (even though that was MY intention the entire time). The part that often is overlooked (especially by me) is my Achiever status. It’s what has kept me playing WoW as long as it has. It’s why I keep a spreadsheet with stats about my book by chapter (okay, not the only why, but definitely a big one). A long checklist is empowering, but only in its completion. The more checks I get to make on my list, the better I feel.
The one exception to this is at the beginning when all the checks are blank. I’m the same way in my reading. I often start slow and increase how much I read per day as I get closer to the end of a book. Part of that is being pulled further and further into the story and part of it is momentum from being able to tell myself how much of the book I’ve already read. Momentum is critical for me.
And that’s when I realized that, for me, I need to write in chunks. The smaller the chunk, the better. I basically have to trick myself into writing a lot by being able to say “See, it’s only 400 words. You can do that.” That worked in editing in a huge way. Looking at a 4000-word chapter made me want to crawl under a rock, but looking at eight scenes ranging from 250 words to 1200 was more manageable because I could trick myself into creating momentum. Every chunk I completed, no matter how small, became a breath of wind in my sails. The more breaths I got, the more I wanted. I wanted to feel the breeze in my face.
I say all this to say that, in writing, you have to find your way to make your momentum work for you. For me, it’s chunks. For some people, it’s consistency. Try lots of different tactics and settle into the one that works. Don’t let ANYONE tell you the “right” way because there isn’t one universal truth in writing novels (or anything else for that matter). Find what’s “right” for you for now. Oh, and be ready to change it as you move from project to project and as you evolve as an individual and an author.
You can do this. I did despite MANY days of certainty that I’d never be where I am.