Ten Tips to Help You Finish Writing Your Novel by Ann Roscopf Allen
1. Set aside a time to write and
keep it sacred.
Make this a time when you know you are at your best and feel most
creative - Saturday mornings, late at night, whatever works for you.
Make writing a priority and arrange other parts of your schedule around
it.
2. Remove all distractions while you write.
Turn off the television. Don't answer the phone. You may need to set
your writing time at a time when no one else is around to help you
avoid being distracted.
3. Outline your plot.
Know generally where you want your story to go. Sometimes stories and
characters develop in unexpected ways, and you need to allow for that.
But keep your guiding plan in mind.
4. Avoid the intimidation of a blank computer screen.
Just start writing. Try freewriting about the plot of the story or a
character to get "the flow" started. Begin a dialogue between two
characters and see where your flow takes you. Sometimes that ends up in
an embarrassingly bad scene, but that bad scene may just have the seeds
of something a lot better in it. Once you've got something written, you
can always improve it, but you have to get something, anything, written
first.
5. Keep a draft mentality.
Nothing you write has to be permanent. Everything can change. If you
get into a good flow and there's a word that you just can't think of,
don't interrupt the flow by pondering over the word or going to the
thesaurus. Leave a blank space and keep writing. There will always be
time to go back and look up that word. At this stage, spelling and
grammar don't matter; just write and create.
6. Don't feel compelled to begin at the beginning.
You don't have to write your story in chronological order during the
drafting phase, especially if you know the main events you want your
novel to cover. Work on the chapter you feel like working on. The first
sentence and the first chapter will probably require the most work, so
don't get frustrated by trying to get them perfect before you write
anything else.
7. Organize your files, especially if you are not going to write in
order.
Create a different file for each chapter you write. That way you can
dip in and fool around with a few words or draft a scene and then save
it, close it up, and move on to a different section of the story. When
you can easily work on what you want, you are also preventing writer's
block.
8. Revise, revise, revise.
Someone once said, "Writing is revising." Change and polish and delete
and rearrange and change some more until you like the sound of the
words. Often the best way to revise a sentence is to delete it.
9. Don't be afraid of putting yourself out there.
Make a list of writers who have written mediocre books (the incentive:
"If he can do it, so can I.") Be emboldened by writers whose works
don't impress you much. The only thing they have over you is their
persistence. There will always be critics, but you have to separate the
wheat from the chaff: some people's criticism means something; most
people's criticism is just so much noise. People keep writing novels
despite the criticism. You might as well be one of them.
10. Only you can determine when you are finished.
Show your writing to a trusted friend, preferably one who knows about
writing. Friends are likely to tell you how wonderful your novel is, as
friends will do, and this of course is not helpful at all. Read between
the lines of their compliments. Ultimately, you have to be the judge of
your own writing.
Make up your mind to finish your novel, and you can do it. The only
thing standing in the way is you.
About the Author
Ann Roscopf Allen (info@aserpentcherished.com) is a college writing instructor and the author of the historical novel “A Serpent Cherished”, based on the true story of an 1891 Memphis murder. Visit her website at http://www.aserpentcherished.com/pages/1/index.htm.