Meg Dowell Writes

It’s not an easy task, and not everyone can do it. But there’s no harm in trying.

My advice? One project at a time. Don’t cheat on your novel with another one. I hate it when I’m just browsing around discussion boards featuring novel-writing and I read comments like, “Well, I’ve started a couple books, but I never finish them, because I just keep getting new ideas that are better than the old ones, so I start a new one without finishing the old one.”

Brain implosion.

Don’t! Don’t do that! That’s bad news! You’re never going to finish ANYTHING if you let your ideas control you, instead of being the one to control your ideas. Write them down, plan them out, but DO NOT start writing unless you’re one hundred percent sure you want to abandon your current project. This doesn’t mean that it’s okay to drop a novel after forty thousand words just because you’re bored. You have to finish, because starting a novel should be like comitting to raising a child. How’s it going to feel if you just stop taking care of it? Exactly.

I’m not saying that, if you’ve never finished a novel, then you’re never going to be a writer. I’m not here to crush your dreams, unless that’s what you came here to find. Maybe, instead of trying to start so many novels, you could try getting your stories out on a much smaller scale, like a short story. Those are a lot less work, a lot less time, and sometimes a lot more satisfying. Try it sometime. And then, maybe when you think you’re ready, you could give the whole novel thing a try.

My last point? If you’re just going to talk about your ideas, there’s something wrong.

If you’re that passionate about writing, then you wouldn’t be telling me about your story—you would be on your laptop writing it. The excuse “I’m too busy” does not exist in the writing world. If you’re too busy to get your ideas down on paper, then you don’t care enough about them to write them down, or you don’t know how. During this past year’s NaNoWriMo, I spent four days out of thirty on the couch sick with the flu, studied constantly for the ACT, wrote three seperate AP English papers, went to school seven to eight hours a day, got an average nine to ten hours of sleep most nights, and wrote a 50,000-word novel. I also raised my grades and stayed on top of my homework, because I MADE TIME for my passion.

Yes, I was very busy. But my ideas needed to be written down, and they were.

I understand that there are people out there who write just for fun, and I admire that. My writing isn’t necessarily all business, either. I’m talking here about people whose dream it is to publish their own novels, who want to have what it takes to make it out there in that terrible market they call book-selling. If you’re going to make it, you have to put in the effort. You can’t just quit in the middle, and you can’t let other things get in the way.

But for those of you who just write on the side, who really don’t care whether or not you ever publish a short story? It’s all good. You have my complete and eternal respect.

And for those of you out there (Evie) who sit down and read every word of your aspiring writer friends’ novels? You’re awesome. You’re beijing (a.k.a. amazing). You’re the ones they’ll turn to as they struggle to acheive their wildest dreams. Whether or not they ever get there, you’ll be the ones they’ll always remember. You’re also the ones who they’ll be thanking when their first book gets published.

Wow. That was some rant, huh?

Love&hugs, Meg♥