Writing a novel can be a daunting task for someone who has never done it. I was that way once. I had countless false starts over many years.
Persistence
One day, I decided I would finish what I started, no matter what. No matter how bad it turned out, I would finish it.
That was October 2004. The novel turned out fair–not bad, but not good either. As a result of finishing the novel, many good things began to happen. The most important of these was that I gained confidence. Never again would I doubt whether I could finish a novel. I could. I did it. I proved I could do it. If I could do it once, I could do it again.
Rewards
In 2005, I met and became friends with David Gerrold. I attended Orson Scott Card‘s literary boot camp, along with I think thirteen other writers. Many of us are still writing, and are still in contact with each other, including Mary Robinette Kowal, Bradley P. Beaulieu, and Spencer Ellsworth. Three very good writers who are still going strong. Also in 2005, I joined Codex Writers Group, and that let me hang out (online) with other writers, probably now numbering several hundred.
Not Satisfied
I learned a lot over the next two years by writing a lot of short fiction. Finally I would see the issues in that novel and I redrafted it, dropping one sub-plot, and upping the word count from 74,000 to 114,000. I had become a better writer.
I finally published that novel under the indie model in 2010.
More Novels
I have written three more novels since then, including a 73,000-word novel that I wrote in 7 weeks. I finished the first draft this past friday evening, as a matter of fact.
Lesson
The ultimate message here is go ahead and finish. You learn so much from that first novel, but more important is the confidence you build. Once you know that you can complete a novel, they aren’t really all that scary anymore.
