Life-Cycle of a Nora Novel

Okay, maybe a Nora novel isn't an officially recognized category—yet!

In any case, I have a pretty methodical way that I go about writing a novel, refined over several manuscripts. So I thought I would share that method in case it is helpful and/or interesting for anyone else!

The video describes it pretty well, but I thought I would also include a short summary here, in case you don't want to watch me blabber for 11 minutes. Or are at work, not that any of us would be thinking about writing at our day jobs!

The ideas for my novels usually get entered into my ideas notebook long before I start writing or even planning them. It's an outlet for all those plot monkeys that demand to be written while I'm trying to finish something else. There are all kind of random things in my notebook, ranging from snippets of dialogues to character sketches and title ideas. For example:

A long stretch of moonlit road. Dry grasslands as far as the eye can see. A lone horse rider, the clop of hooves a slow staccato, the rider slumped in the saddle. A faint wind stirs dust along the road.

This is written in my notebook with zero context. Just an image I had one day a few years ago. Anyway, I take one of these ideas that I want to work on, and I start to brainstorm. I like to do the one sentence premise -> paragraph -> plot summary progression. Then I write an outline. An honest-to-goodness, I.A.i.a. outline. From that outline, I create an Excel spreadsheet scene list. Here is where I plan out the details of the timeline, the POV, who is where, and what happens.

Then I write!

For the most part, I stick to that scene list. I guess that may seem boring to some, but for me, I like the structure it provides. It's like a checklist—butt in chair, write this scene. If I get wild inspiration, I'll pause to work it in, but that just isn't the way I normally work. Eventually, voila! A draft!

The revision process is pretty simple. Read through it, take notes. Create a new Excel sheet and, from those notes, come up with a revision plan checklist. Copy the scene list and modify it as needed to accommodate the changes. Then go back and make all the edits! X them off as I go, so I get to see my Excel percentage go up. Rinse and repeat until it feels done. Somewhere in there, try to get feedback from beta readers to incorporate into the revision notes.

Once I'm happy with it, write a query and a synopsis, and begin sending it out! At this point, the novel is basically done. If I get a partial or full request (very rarely...), I don't go back and re-read or edit, I just send what I have. Only if I am having a really bad response do I then go back and maybe do another edit.

So that's it! That's as far as it goes for me, for now. Someday I hope I will have to worry about agent edits and editor edits and all that fun stuff, but that's a future!Nora problem. Right-now-Nora needs to worry about writing that damn synopsis for Novel 7 and picking out an idea to flesh out for Novel 8...

Every Writer's Most and Least Favorite Part*

*Note: I have no idea if other writers feel the same way, the title just sounds better that way!

There are a lot of things I love about writing. The way I can send myself anywhere in space and time and universe. When my characters come to life and make me laugh or cry. That moment when I look up and realize two hours have flown by while I was engrossed.

There are a lot of things I hate about writing. The crushing feeling that my writing is not good enough. The hopeless mountain of rejections. When my characters refuse to do anything believable and creak across my landscape as cardboard cutouts. That moment when I look up and realize it's been two hours and I still haven't written a damn thing.

But one of the things I both love and hate is that first step. The beginning.

A moment of sheer terror and joy.

You've created in your mind this wonderful novel that you are going to write. You've plotted and planned it out (if you're like me!). It is going to be funny and heartbreaking and speak to our inner fears of loss and the pointlessness of life and the meaning of home and family. In your mind, it is an unputdownable masterpiece. The possibilities are endless!

Unfortunately, one of those possibilities is that what you write will in no way live up to what you've envisioned. For me, the doubt can creep in almost immediately. "That's a terrible first sentence. Where's the hook?!" you might wail. You picture a legion of readers being bored by the first paragraph and putting your book back on the shelf (but wait, that's assuming that it doesn't go straight to the circular file of every agent, editor, or publisher that looks at it!). The first scene is limp. The second is too short. You're giving too much detail, you're not giving enough.

It's maddening. While the page is blank, it could become anything. And you're so excited to start crafting, but once the page begins to fill up, reality sinks in.

But the best solution is to just push through! I'm not one who believes in the Total Shit First Draft, but I also don't believe that the work is set in stone from the first keystroke. Write something decent now, get it down there, and polish into the beauty it could be later.

I am onto the third chapter of my new novel (novel 7, it shall be known), whose very beginning is pictured above. It is still an exciting ride and I hope it remains so until the end!

Breakthrough! And then...

It's so funny how much I've been realizing the truth of my own words! After hitting a long lull, I finally got a burst of inspiration (on a cross-country flight, oddly enough). That was all it took for me to gain momentum. After over a week of 0 word days, I was busting out almost 2k a day! I caught up to my September progress goals! I was going to do awesome this month!

And then technical difficulties. I was unable to access my Google docs where my work was saved. (I have other copies, but not on the computer I had available for working.) A whole week of being stymied by these issues, and so then when I did have the time and resources this weekend to work...no momentum. Totally gone. Another string of 0's for days on end. Totally stalled.

So finally today I am ready to go. Really feeling good, have a few ideas to implement...and I realize I don't have my rough draft to work from! It's enough to make me beat my head against the wall. Still, I didn't let my inspiration go to waste, and I knocked out the rest of my structural work. Now I have an entirely completed outline to work to! Looking at 18 chapters, 69 scenes total. (Currently on Chapter 4, Scene 3...) Once I hit about Chapter 9, I expect the pace to pick up a lot more, because the second half was written this year (as opposed to the first half, written in high school!), and needs much less re-writing. And no added scenes past Chapter 8! (In contrast, of the 14 scenes completed in this draft, 4 of them are new.)

Anyway, hopefully I can get some words down tonight when notepads and files are re-united!

Drafting is Fun!

The past few weeks of finishing my rough draft have bee difficult. From time to time I wondered why I was even doing this. I wasn't having fun, I was constantly beating myself up, and it was painful to get 200 words a day. Yet I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and I am so glad I pushed through! Now that I have started on my re-write, inspiration has flourished anew. I'm easily cruising past my daily word goal of 800, having half-hour bouts of writing that are kicking out 1K words. True, a large part of these words are merely adapted from what I had already written. But what I find myself doing mostly is reading over a page or two of my handwritten draft, and then typing at will for my new draft. Sometimes I surprise myself by using the exact same turn of phrase for an upcoming part that I haven't re-read recently, and sometimes I start going one way and wonder how I ever wrote it so differently to start with.

Besides just the writing of the new draft, there is the plotting and restructuring. I have a whole list of the scenes from my first draft, and that snapshot makes it easy to see how much I really needed to do some structural work! Over the six years of the first draft, I seemed to have gone through several phases regarding chapters. I have one chapter that is 13 scenes long and is nearly half the draft, followed by six single-scene chapters! And jumping from city to city because trying to describe travel bored me, which leads to weeks and miles being condensed sloppily into 2 key scenes and 5 pages. I've been having a lot of fun moving things around, adding new scenes here and there, combining others. It's kind of like starting a whole new novel, except a lot easier because most of the hardest work is done!

So writing is on the upswing for me right now. I'm almost telling myself I could be ready to start writing query letters by the end of the year! Then I realize I'm getting way ahead of myself. Oops.

(Right now, going off MWord word count. Once the draft is finished, I'll revise to "manuscript word count," with the 12 point Courier font and 250 "words" per page.)