Writing a novel is often a long, lonely road where the mud is thick and the end as shimmery and unattainable as the end of a rainbow. Fortunately for us, it’s easy to leave this tough road and go back to civilisation with its cars, bars, central heating and people who already enjoy our company.
I’ve been writing for most of my adult life, and I still feel the shudder of imposter syndrome when I begin something new. A novel asks a lot of you. Time, attention, hope, patience. It asks you to sit in a room with your own thoughts and decide which of them work dramatically as part of a chain of cause and effect. It never gets any easier. What does get easier is recognising that this anxiety is essential to the work. It is not supposed to be quick and easy.
People often imagine novel-writing as a series of romantic thunderstrikes: the book pours out in one gushing wave that leaves a complete and print-ready masterpiece in its wake. In reality, the process is closer to that of an archaeological dig. You excavate. You brush away dust. You uncover something odd and half-buried, and you decide whether it’s worth showing to the world. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. The discipline is in returning the next day regardless of the find.
The key word in the above paragraph is: process.
Writing a novel is a process. It has stages that lead to stages. It starts with questions and it ends with answers of one sort or another.
When I wrote Gigantic, I didn’t begin with answers. I began with a question: What if someone believed in a yeti-style monster in my hometown. Like most novels, it started as a mess: notes, fragments, half-scenes, warring versions, experimental layouts and. That’s how it should be. A novel doesn’t arrive fully formed. It reveals itself slowly, provided you stay on that long, lonely road and keep your eyes on the distance rainbow’s end.
Writing a novel forces you to make sense of things — your obsessions, your history, your questions — over a sustained stretch of time. When I look back at my own work, including the earlier books and the seventy-odd short stories I’ve written, I can see patterns I wasn’t aware of at the time. Writing reveals what you care about, sometimes before you’re ready to admit it.
Over the years – across novels, short stories, and the many manuscripts I’ve edited and critiqued – I’ve learned that the biggest threat to a novel is not the lack of a talent to nurture, but interruption. Life is very good at getting in the way. Careers, families, obligations, the constant low-level noise of the world. This is why so many novels remain unwritten. Not because the ideas aren’t good enough, but because the conditions to finish them are never quite right.
If you’re thinking about writing a novel, my advice is simple and unfashionable. Start before you’re ready. Accept that it will be difficult. Don’t wait for permission or perfect conditions. Stay with it when it turns awkward and uncooperative—because it will. On the other side of that resistance is something solid and real: a book-shaped answer to a question only you could ask.
But, if you don’t have the time to learn how to write well, and if you don’t have the time to write, a ghostwriter can help you in a variety of ways, from helping you plan your story to writing it for you to editing your manuscript to a publishable standard.
As I always say, if you have an idea, we have a book.
If you think I can help you write your novel, get in touch. Your story deserves a chance.
