Writing A First Novel

Writing a first novel is a very exciting experience.

In many ways it’s the easiest novel you’ll ever write. There’s no deadline for example. You can take as long as you want to write it. There are no expectations from anybody. With a second novel (assuming your first got published) everybody - you, your family and friends, your readers, your agent and your publisher - will be wondering if it was as good as your first.

If your first novel didn’t get published then writing the second can be harder, as your confidence can be somewhat knocked. (Use EFT to regain your confidence and solve this problem.)

When writing a first novel you can play around with ideas, and genres, and you can experiment to your heart’s content. There’s an innocence about it; the sense of a child playing, engrossed.

You can induldge yourself in learning so much about writing, using resources like this website and the much recommended work by Holly Lisle.

(Or you should be. If you’re not, question why you’re doing this. Is it that you want to get rich writing fiction?  If you’re not enjoying the process, then I strongly urge you to give up now and to go and find something else more satisfying for you.)

So, if all is as it should be, you’re loving the whole process for its own sake.

However …

Having said all that, there are ways in which writing a first novel is harder than subsequent novels.

For a start, you’ve absolutely no idea if it’s any good or not. You’re working on your own, possibly without feedback. You’re putting hours and hours of your life into this project with no clue if it’ll succeed. (Which is why I recommend defining success differently.)

However, if your first novel was published then you can bring an increased confidence to your second. You know you’re publishable. You probably have at least a two-book contract, so you even know that this novel is guaranteed to be published. It’s a great feeling!

And if your first novel was not published, then you can bring all that you have learned to the writing of the second. You may well find that this novel is deeper, richer, more rounded. In writing a first novel, you’ve learned so, so much that is integrally part of you now and will help you with all future writing. (Just as your second novel will teach you more to enrich your third and so on.)

Each of the five novels I've written (of which three are published) is different; each was birthed differently and brought different challenges and different gifts. Each is unique and precious. I only have one child, but I imagine that this is what it is like to have several children.

So, enjoy writing a first novel for its own sake. You’ll enjoy the others too, just as much, but in a different way.

For help in writing novels, I recommend you check out the excellent writers' software that's available.

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