In the following weeks I will be giving each and everyone of you a step by step series on how to write your novel. I am going to break it up into a number of series with each series having about 5 steps in each one. This is entirely free to you. I could easily make it into an e-book but I won’t for a couple of reasons. Firstly my passion is writing. There is nothing more I like to do than write. Secondly in return I just ask that you have a look at my websites that will be listed at the bottom. Feel free to direct your friends and family to have a look at this as well. I am not promising you are going to write the all American novel but you have to love writing before you can make money at it. It took me a long time to make any money at my writing and I still don’t make enough to pay the bills but there is nothing I would rather be doing. Well enough with that and let’s get down to business.
1. Commitment
Firstly and most importantly in your endeavor to write your first novel it is all so important to make a commitment. This isn’t to your friends or family but rather to you. So what I want you to do is look in the mirror and tell yourself that no matter how rough this gets you are going to carry on and get this finished. Without this commitment you may as well stop reading and forget you ever found this. So the commitment I want you to make is that you are going to write. You’re writing your first novel and that makes you a writer and writers write so that gets you through step one.
2. Set A Schedule
This is probably where most writers fail. They procrastinate, get a good start, get bored and forget they even started. All writers have different schedules, but the one thing they do have in common is that they have a schedule. I personally don’t have a schedule written in stone because of the work I do on my other job. You can never plan your day. However this is what I do. I commit to getting up an hour early every morning and that is for writing. Before bed I commit to an hour of writing. So all I can commit to in a day is 2 hours. That time is only dedicated to my writing and you would be surprised at how much I get done if I can only utilize those two hours. But a lot of times my other job allows me time for writing and without a word of a lie some days I get 14 hours of writing time in. So be realistic in setting your schedule and understand that sometimes you may have to sway from it but also remember a lot of writers fail because they set their schedule and then they don’t follow through with it.
3. Decisions Decisions
Ok now the time has come for you to decide what you are going to write about. Now is the time to stop procrastinating and get to work. Of course you’re not going to know every detail and concept that you want to put into your book but at least you’re going to get the wheels rolling. The time has come to quit talking about writing a book. Now the time has come to plan it and write it.
4. What Are You Going To Write About?
Now you have to decide what you are going to write about. I suggest a topic that really gets you going. My utmost favorite author in the world is Stephen King. When I pick up one of his books I just can’t put the thing down. So of course you have probably figured out what my books are based on. Maybe you like science fiction or a good murder mystery. It doesn’t matter what you write about but it makes it easier if you can put passion into the story.
5. Don’t Be A Bore
I don’t care what you write about. Hell it could even be needle point but you have to make sure you are not boring to your reader. The only real hard fast rule is that your stories have to be interesting. You can have all the drama and excitement that you want but if you don’t make it interesting it’s going to flop.
Okay this is the end of my first lesson on my step by step series on how to write a novel. Remember not everyone is going to write the perfect novel but at the end of the day if you keep following these steps I guarantee no matter what you will have something that you are proud of.
Dale is presently in the process of getting his first novel published. He has also started dabbling in short stories. You can find some of these on his blog at http://stcajo-readshortstories.blogspot.com/ And lastly he deals a little in the affiliate marketing gig which can be checked out at http://www.7dayebook.com/?hop=stcajo orhttp://stcajo.profitlan.hop.clickbank.net You can also contact him at stcajo2011@yahoo for any info on his writing or products.
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