deeplyshallow // how to write a novel

how to write a novel

The weekend is only a day old, but it’s been a productive one. Until now, Eleanor has been three things: an early, eight-chapter draft; a five-year-run of disjointed sketches; and a larger pile of carefully rewritten sketches. What it hasn’t really been, at any point, is a novel. I’ve spent most of those years creating the pieces, and polishing them. Now I’m assembling the best of them, discarding the ones that don’t fit, and writing the ones that have been missing.

Six years I’ve been working on this, I keep reminding myself. I had really ought to begin writing a real first draft at some point.

And so I am. I have given up on the tactic of waiting for isolated blocks of time in which to write; they either are too few, or, when they do exist, they are so suffocated with the pressure to write that I find myself incapable of motivation. Instead, I am writing in stolen moments, turning my strategic assault on this story into something of a guerrilla strike instead, storming in whenever possible, regrouping when the attack doesn’t go as planned.

It seems to be working, so far. I’m a prologue and a first chapter deep, running somewhere around ten thousand words. The story map has been incredibly valuable to me even this early in the process. Having kicked the character and various pieces of her story around for so long, it’s sometimes hard to force Eleanor down a linear path.

The prologue to the book has always been a little heavy. It’s the core of Eleanor’s story, the reason for her every decision, so this is where I begin. It’s visual, it’s exciting, it’s different. Which makes the very first chapter, which begins with Eleanor’s parents before she’s been conceived, a little dry by comparison. I’ve been working primarily on that chapter for the past few days, and I couldn’t figure out why her folks were so boring. Finally hit me: I’d been writing them as if they were adults, properly trained in the business of life and living it. Which isn’t the case at all. They’re a couple of early-twenties rookies just beginning to make the mistakes that everybody learns from. They’re a couple of giggling, oblivious kids playing house. The moment I realized that, the rest of the problems in the chapter took care of themselves.

Given that the writing of this novel is becoming such a different process than my previous books, I am weighing the benefits of sharing the progress with a few select readers much earlier than I have done in the past. I have for the most part kept my books to myself until they’ve been complete, and then I’ve invited a few trusted peers to read them (not including my sister, who has always read segments of the novels while they’re being written). I’m thinking of assembling a small group of readers, who I will disseminate chapters to as they are completed. I imagine that, since I am maintaining such a fragmented writing schedule, this sort of ongoing review process will help me to plug the gaps I do not see as readily as if I were writing daily for hours at a time.

I have a couple of people in mind for this, but I know there are a few longtime readers of the Eleanor sketches I’ve been posting here since 2004. This little reading group may never happen, but if you’re interested and you don’t think I’ve already considered you, then let me know.