How to Stick to Writing Your Novel
"You have to stay faithful to what you're working on." - Stephen King
You want to write. You want to be like Stephen King, or John Grisham. You have a bright idea, you have created a full plot around this idea and you have written your outline. In fact, you are already writing your novel. As you go on writing, though, it becomes pretty tiring. Everyday, after living life like a usual citizen, you always have to stop to write lots of paragraphs and create a realistic world out of complete nothing. Yes, you must spend time living your life in order to write something interesting, but living your life makes your characters less interesting than they are when you are busy writing about them all the time. You start to consider another career. You begin to lose faith in your writing. How do you make sure that you make it to the literary finish line? Here are some suggestions:
1. Write about something that really interests you. Don't write about something just because most writers write about it. Write about something that you love. If you love horror stories, write about a writer of horror stories. If you love music, write about a musician.
2. Even before you begin writing the first word of your novel, think of what its last word is going to be. It pays to know where your finish line is.
3. Base one of the characters on someone you love. Be it one of your parents, your best friend or your spouse, base one of the characters on someone you love to help yourself relate more to the character and the story. This way, you will care about the story and will be less likely to keep it from reaching its conclusion.
4. Include something that you yearn for within the story. All of us yearn for something, but can't always get it. If you're forbidden from eating chocolate cake even though you love it so much, write about a daughter of a baker of chocolate cakes. If you wish to bring back your son to being a child again (because you just don't like who he has become), write about a mother who did exactly that.
I hope that these tips help you because I am doing them right now.
The things that bring me back to writing my novel the most are: a) my villain is based on someone I love and b) he lives in the place that I've always wanted to live in (but just can't live in, not even visit). I chose to put the best details particularly in the villain because I have a big problem with my villains. My villains had been extremely neurotic and violent despite being very charismatic and intelligent. My villains always discourage me from going on with the story because they scare the hell out of me. This time, the novel that I am writing has a villain that I care about. The picture above shows the real-life entrance to his fictional home.
I hope that this will help you find more interest in your project and happy writing.
Photo credit: me