How to write your novel in 2024

Guys, I've got a very good feeling about this one...

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Hello, and welcome to the Monday CCC newsletter! Thank you for having me, I am thrilled to be here.

Firstly, I’m sharing a Very Special Christmas Special - we’re closing out our icons season of You’re Booked with JILLY COOPER. Jilly is the guest I’ve dreamed of hosting, ever since we started the podcast (and we just turned five!) This is a giddy, fizzy romp of a conversation with an international treasure. There’s book chat, marriage advice and a debate of crucial importance - whither the jumpsuit?! Find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

Any other business? Yes! I’d love to invite you to the paperback launch of my latest novel Limelight - come and hang out with me at The Yard, Hampshire. Tickets here. Also, if you’re a paying subscriber, we’ve got a fantastic Sunday Session masterclass with creativity coach Sheryl Garratt coming up. More info here. If you can’t make it on Sunday, you can watch it on demand. And if you’re not a paying subscriber yet, there’s a Christmas offer just for you - an annual subscription is 45 per cent off - which gets you all of the previous masterclasses on demand, full access to the archives, bonus letters and a discount on my courses. My creative fiction course Write Like A Reader is coming back in the New Year - you can find out more below…

And on that theme, this week I’m sharing some advice for anyone with big writing plans for 2024. I have faith in you, I believe in you, and if you want to achieve your goals and dreams, I think these tips will help…

Create a writing routine that’s ‘baggy enough to live in’ (TM Sheryl Garratt)

This advice comes from my fabulous friend, creativity coach Sheryl Garratt. (She’s the guest at the December Sunday Session – you can find out more here). You can work out what sort of routine you need by considering the way you respond to the word ‘routine’. Does it make you feel comforted, or restricted?

It can be a struggle for us to take our creative ambitions seriously. And if we can’t do that, we can’t expect anyone else to take them seriously, either.

Firstly, many of us don’t have ‘routine friendly’ lives – we’re often blown off course by recurring, non-recurring things we can’t plan for. There’s a childcare emergency, or our friends and family need us, or the boiler breaks or the trains are cancelled. We get called away to fight other people’s fires. It is a struggle to protect our creative time. It can also be a struggle for us to take our creative ambitions seriously. And if we can’t do that, we can’t expect anyone else to take them seriously, either.

Secondly, if you have even half a gram of romance in your soul, a ‘writing routine’ just sounds wrong, like ‘accountancy circus’ or ‘ballet of admin’. We can’t picture Keats signing up to Calendly, and blocking out half an hour of writing time. We don’t imagine any of the Brontës dragging themselves away from the dinner table at 9PM on a Tuesday when the rest of the family sits down to watch Line Of Duty.

Here's my opinion; and I know many writers and creativity experts disagree. You don’t have to write every day but try to write every other day. I believe it’s better to write for ten minutes, as often as you can, than to write for eight hours once a week. Firstly, you’re building a muscle – using that muscle little and often will help you to get strong. Secondly, the more you write, the more you write. And the more you write, the more excited you are about your writing. Your idea will grow, and crucially, it will stay hot to the touch. The more often you bring your kinetic energy to it, the more quickly it will come to life.

You don’t want to perform your creativity. You don’t want it to feel like a heavy obligation. You want it to become one of the habits you barely think about. (Please reserve your precious thinking energy for the writing itself, not for thinking about writing!) Also, once you’ve skipped a week, it’s much harder to come back strong the next week. If you skip a day, it’s fairly easy to regain your ground. If you wrote 500 words a day, every other day, with a handful of ‘buffer days’, you’d have 90,000 words in a year, which is the average length of a novel. You might find that initially, you struggle to get to 200 words. But as that muscle becomes stronger, you’ll have 1000+ word days. Your novel will write itself!

Treat it like a building project

We’ve all seen Grand Designs. We all know what it is to be cosy on one’s sofa, enveloped in a blanket of great schadenfreude, when the special tiles from Italy get stuck in customs, the solar panels shatter and the place in Notting Hill goes on the market, forcing our heroes to spend a drizzly winter in an on-site caravan.

I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but that is what writing your book is going to feel like. There will be good days and bad days, and on the bad days, it will be as though Kevin McCloud is standing over your shoulder, shaking his head, in high-vis and a hard hat. When you write your first draft, you’re digging the foundations of what will become your beautiful and sturdy house. It might not resemble what you hoped for, or what your story will become, in any way. It will probably look like an ugly, muddy mess. But the whole project will be built on those messy foundations. They’re crucial.

You’ll set yourself tight, impossible deadlines. You’ll tell people that you’ll be ‘finished by Christmas!’ and then be delayed by emotional bad weather. You will think you’re almost there, and discover rotting beams, leaks and bats. You will struggle to get planning permission, too. You’ll have a fabulous idea and the meanest, bossiest bit of your subconscious will wield a big red stamp that says ‘DENIED’.

The thing about Grand Designs and your novel is that they both begin with an impossible dream that will be manifested, thanks to time, effort, hope, patience, and vision. The good news is that it’s unlikely that you will go over budget by a million pounds, when you’re writing it. The bad news is that it’s easier to abandon your novel at the messy, muddy stage. When your book feels like a building site, remember it’s supposed to feel that way. Keep going, brick by brick. It doesn’t need to be perfect - it just needs to be weatherproof. And when all else fails, imagine Kevin, sitting in your big glass kitchen, holding a shiny finished copy and saying, ‘I didn’t think you’d do it, but you did it!’

Choose your cheerleaders

Writing gets lonely, but you don’t have to do it all by yourself. You don’t have to show your work to anyone, but you do need support, encouragement and kindness. The trouble is that especially in the UK, where I am writing this, we have a weird relationship with achievement, and hope. Somewhere, deep in our cellular make-up, we carry a conviction that it’s our sworn duty to protect our loved ones from disappointment. (This can be a class issue too – this is why there is an ancient and inglorious tradition of wealthy people making all the art.) Starting to write is a hopeful exercise, and when we declare our hopefulness, we become incredibly vulnerable. I’d love it if you were surrounded by nurturing, cherishing people who longed for you to realise your full potential. But you may have pessimistic friends, or bitchy siblings, or the sort of mother who says things like ‘Your Great Auntie Marion wanted to write a book, and she was pecked to death by a goose, so think on!’

I’m a huge fan of the London Writers’ Salon - it’s an online community for writers all over the world. I get a great sense of community spirit from attending their Writers’ Hour, and it’s a good place to find your crew, and look for writers’ groups to join. You’ll know whether you’re a ‘group’ person, or not. I think they’re fantastic for cultivating accountability, but they favour the emotionally robust! To keep up with my British Reality Show theme, I think some writing groups can get a bit Come Dine With Me, but with manuscripts instead of racks of lamb.

When I am feeling discouraged, I go back to Big Magic and Bird By Bird – because I believe these are the kindest of all the writing books. Liz Gilbert and Anne Lamott practise profound generosity, and they remind me that creativity is an abundant thing. When I’m strangled by a mean, tight, jealous, anxious feeling, these writers dissolve that feeling. They make me feel warm, and loose. And they help me with another important habit. Optimism. Because nothing inspires me to write like feeling hopeful about my writing. We’re all responsible for realising our potential. To write well, we don’t need six months away from work, or a secluded cabin in the woods, or a butler or a book deal. In fact, we can have all of those things, but if we don’t have faith in ourselves and our work, we can’t write a single word. It’s completely normal to experience self-doubt. Doubt doesn’t mean that anything is going wrong. We just need curiosity and confidence too. We can all soar, but first, we must build ourselves a clear flight path.

I believe that if you can read and love a novel, you can write one. If you’d like to write your novel in 2024, I’d love to work with you. My creative fiction course Write Like A Reader returns on January 7^th. I teach five weekly sessions over Zoom, covering Beginnings, Characters, Plot, Pacing and Endings. The course is designed to boost your confidence and show you just how much you already know about telling stories, whether you’re a seasoned writer or an absolute beginner. Every session is available to watch on catch up, so you don’t need to worry about missing one. It costs £350 inclusive – or £295 for paying subscribers. (Annual subscriptions are currently on offer, so if you’ve been thinking about joining for a little while, this is a great time to sign up.)

If you’d like the full syllabus, or more information about Write Like A Reader, email creativeconfidenceclinic@gmail.com

Have a wonderful week

Love

Daisy x