5 Lessons from Writing Half a Book

I went into this book with the assumption that it’ll end up being between 80,000 and 100,000 words, which is pretty standard for a novel. In fact, 80,000-90,000 is even more in the sweet spot. Of course, I have no idea if things will work out like I planned, but it’s a pretty decent bet that’ll be my range.

As such, I’m halfway-ish there. On Monday night, I hit 40,000 words on my 25th day of writing, then 50,000 on the 28th day. Looking at what I’ve written and thinking about what’s left, I could see this being about a halfway point. But the characters could surprise the hell out of me and decide to do something I’m totally not anticipating. And, while that’d be kind of fun, I might have to take one of them aside and have a little conversation if they try to lead me too far astray at this point.

This is easily the furthest into a story I’ve ever been, and I’ve learned a lot during the process — particularly since I went into this not knowing hardly a damn thing. Here’s the 5 biggest lessons I’ve gotten so far:

1. It takes a lot of story to write a novel.
   When I look back at the beginning of my story — which isn’t very often — it seems like it was so long ago, and I think of the crazy amount of changes and twists and turns and beers I’ve gone through in the subsequent 24 days. Even getting to 40,000 words has required me to have quite a bit to say about these characters, and a rather vast, layered story.
2. You need a goal.
   At first, my goal was 1,000 words a day on weekends and 1 hour of writing time on weeknights. But, as I wrote more, I found I didn’t really want to stop at 1,000, and I could get 1,500+ done in about an hour. So I upped it to 1,500, and I shot well past that on some weekend mornings, while my fiancee outslept me by 2-3 hours. Such are the benefits of being an early riser. There are, of course, downsides. I won’t go into them now.
3. Following your characters has fringe benefits.
   I was determined to let my characters drive the narrative, as I’ve discussed. But I didn’t realize that doing so would feed my story later as well. It’s been odd. There have been multiple examples of times when I listened to the characters who grew out of the story, letting them do what they logically seemed set to do, and later that paid off by solving a problem before it came up. It makes me think that some of the authors I’ve read who I thought were very clever or great planners may just have been listening closely to their characters.
4. I can write just about anywhere.
   People talk about their Zen writing environment, with the perfect desk and lighting and the Zen garden and the koi pond and the Dalai Lama sitting in the corner. In 25 days, I’ve written upstairs on the couch with the computer on my lap, on the couch at my parents’ place by their Christmas tree, in my living-room chair, in a hotel coffee shop in Tampa, and even at work — hey, it was the week after Christmas, and there was nothing to do! I used to write deadline stories in my car. I’m malleable.
5. There’s a long way to go.
   It seems like I’ve written a lot, but I’m just over halfway done. It’s a little hard to believe that I have to do about that same amount of work one more time, but I think I’m ready, and I’m definitely excited to see how it all turns out. Who lives? Who dies? Hell, even I don’t know. And if I don’t know, hopefully nobody else will at this point either. Lots is going to happen. I know that much.