By popular-ish demand, but mostly because I kind of feel like it and don’t feel like doing some of the work stuff I really should be doing, here’s a post on the logistics of writing the first draft of novel in about two months. Readers who have no interest in the musings of a dilettante author on the process of crafting genre fiction are strongly advised to disembark here and now. 

Also, I apologize if I’ve already written about some of this, because it’s likelier that I have than that I haven’t given I’ve been blogging for fourteen (!) years, but who’s got the time to rummage through the archives when I could be serving you piping-hot, delicious, new or lightly recycled words instead. 

Last chance to leave unscathed…

You’re still here? Seriously? 

Okay then. 

*pulls up sleeves, cracks knuckles*

This post will be mostly about the logistics of writing my second novel and some insights achieved in the process.

What it is that I write

I write short fiction across genres (general/literary, horror, sci-fi, weird fiction, mystery, and humor), with the number of published pieces approaching ten squared. Short fiction is a great way to develop one’s voice and craft, experiment with form and function, and learn to self-edit. These reasons are not why I started writing stories, but they are why I’m grateful today that I’ve been writing short fiction for years (since 2017) because what I’ve learned from the process (and also from technical writing and from blogging here) has been invaluable when I decided to embark on writing novels. 

As a novelist, I write so-called genre fiction. There are a lot of definitions of what makes literary fiction versus what makes genre fiction, and many such definitions (google away!) end up sounding a bit insulting to both the authors and the readers of genre fiction. I would say genre fiction emphasizes plot over characterization and language, while literary fiction emphasizes language and/or characterization over plot. However, plenty of genre books have superb characterization and lovely turns of phrase (see modern literary horror, for example), while compelling literary fiction generally has a narrative arc that makes the reader turn pages. You can’t have any type of emotionally resonant fiction without strong characterization, however, people often read for entertainment and there are popular genres where books that sell have spare language and minimal characterization, but excellent dialogue and action-packed plot. 

Anyway, I write genre fiction with what I believe (and the reviews confirm) is strong character work and some nice writing, but rest assured, I will never receive a literary prize. That’s fine by me. I’m after fortune over fame, so that I can finally buy my trophy husband of 25 years that beachfront property I promised.

I jest, I jest. 

Seriously now, I write because I really enjoy it. And it’s been amazing to witness my own craft development, when in my work and at home I spend so much time focusing on the development of others. I fund, manage, and oversee while younger folks do all the fun stuff. Well, writing is something I do for myself…and for whomever wants to buy my books. 

Writing the first book

I will do almost anything to get out of doing what I’m supposed to be doing. That’s why no other job would suit me as well as being faculty does, because there’s so much to do that I can procrastinate on one thing (or even five things) by doing any of the other twenty things I need to do, which feeds both my inner procrastinator and my inner overachiever. 

I had a plan for a whole first novel, with a good plot and interesting characters, and I kept avoiding to write it. I realized I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so I set it aside and started a completely different project, one a little more trope-driven, and I told myself it could be a novelette or a novella, it didn’t matter, I could figure out what to do with it once I was done. I told myself I could trunk it, too, it wouldn’t be a big deal; it was just for practice. And so, I was able to start writing. I wrote about 65% of it in the summer of 2022, the rest over winter break 2022/23, edited and polished and had it beta-read, started querying in the spring of 2023, signed a contract with a small genre publisher in the late summer of 2023, and the book was out in the spring of 2024. 

Did the book make a splash? No, it did not. The small publisher did a nice job with cover art and editing, but they don’t do much marketing or promotion for people who are not their reliable bestsellers. I’ve been pretty much on my own, and I’ve done what I could. I did sell some books, but I’ve also learned that a) people are reluctant to pick up a book by an unknown debut author, and b) front list sells the back list,  meaning that the best way to sell books is to write more books, as each new book picks up a few new readers, and they go and peruse the back catalog. 

So, I realized that rather than killing myself trying to sell one book, I simply needed to write more. 

In the words of my colleague, who originally said this for scientific projects, “There’s never a shortage of ideas, only time and money.” I don’t have a shortage of ideas, and after researching what people who write my genre do (hint: they put out multiple books per year), I figured I should see how fast I could write given I have the job I have. 

Writing the second book

Here is some great writing advice from my youngest kid: “There’s a lot of day left after 4 pm.” He was referring to his afterschool videogame time, but he’s right in general. 

I drafted my second novel working mostly after dinner, 6–9 or 7–9 pm, at the local Barnes & Noble. It took less than 8 weeks.

After the first novel, the process wasn’t scary anymore, and once it wasn’t scary, it was doable. Now, many serious writers will aim for 1k words per day or 2k words per day. I don’t like to be that regimented because I know I will have days when I’m simply too busy with work to do much else, also days when I will just fart around, so instead I aimed for 8–10k words per week, and as long as I hit this range on most weeks, I told myself I would be good. It turns out, some weeks I went way over, a couple of weeks I came close but not quite. Here’s my table:

This was for the first draft only. After that I took another full month for several comprehensive edits before sending it to beta readers and ultimately to the publisher (they have the right of first refusal, since it’s a book in a series that started with them). 

As you can see in the table, I did try to hit 2k words on most days when I wrote, but on some days it was really hard. I also couldn’t sustain multiple weeks with 12–15k words and six writing days. I know some pro writers can do it, but I clearly cannot, at least not at this point. 

Now, I feel writing in the evening is really beneficial for drafting fiction because writing when tired weakens the inner editor, eases the access to the subconscious, and generally improves flow. I wouldn’t recommend editing technical prose or writing code or doing complicated math when tired, but drafting fiction? Absolutely. I often finished a session with only the vaguest recollection of what I’d just written, which was a little like being drunk, only wholesome. With this novel, I focused on moving forward rather than editing as I went, so I pleasantly surprised myself a few times at the quality of some parts that I was barely cognizant of ever having written. 

People ask if I’m a plotter (someone who makes a detailed outline, character sheets, etc.) or a pantser (from the expression “flying by the seat of one’s pants”; someone who doesn’t plan or outline but makes stuff up as they go). I don’t think you can really be a true pantser when you write novels as the time commitment is too large to go in completely blind, but I will never be a person who handwrites pages upon pages of character descriptions before starting to write. What I have are some key character features and the main beats of the plot: the central conflict and the key obstacles (internal and external) to what the characters strive for. I don’t write those down, just mull them over for weeks or months while I do other stuff, until I feel satisfied that the conflict is substantive enough and serious enough to propel the book, that there will be significant character growth and change as  the characters face the external and internal obstacles, and that the story feels exciting for me to write, because if it’s a slog to write, it will be a slog for people to read. Then I start and let the process of putting the words down take me where it will. 

One thing I emphasize is a tight rein on logic. I have been saved from major plot issues more than once in each books by asking, “How would this come to be? Would an actual person do this here? Or would they do this instead?” Every time I followed my inner pedant down the rabbit hole of logical consistency, several things cleared up or fell into place. I mention this here because I’ve started noticing issues in other people’s books where I bet they had something as part of the outline and they stuck with it despite alarms blaring that things made no sense. Often, they could’ve gotten to the same pivotal point with some other, more logical assumptions or paths, but some people will adhere to the outline like barnacles to a whale, and then the whale sinks their story boat. 

Writing the next book

I took a short break, polished and submitted some short fiction, and of course read a ton. 

But now it’s time to start writing the next book. I hope I can draft one in the fall, one in the spring, one in the summer; that beachfront property isn’t going to buy itself (although, if I live long enough, the ocean might come to meet me here in middle America thanks to global warming). During a regular semester, especially with all I’ve got going on, I don’t think I will be cracking 10k words per week very often, but writing fiction is something I do for me, and I want to try and build up my catalog. I have outlines for i) a standalone novel, the one I wanted to write to begin with, ii) the next two books of the current series (I  should really write these first, but I don’t really wanna), and iii) two of the three books in a completely new series. At present, I’m deciding which of these threads to pull. 

Phew! This was a lot. 

What say you, blogosphere? Thoughts, shouts, murmurs?