The seven stages of writing a novel are for the most part the same whether you’re doing it for the first time or the fourth time. As a student, I can vouch for a fact that this list is also very similar to “The Seven Stages of Writing Your English Class Essay,” just with more pain, tears, and (if you’re luckily) eventual euphoria.
- “This is going to be really fun and straight-up awesome.”
This is the part where you call your friends and family to tell them you are going to embark on the momentous journey of writing a novel. Or maybe you’re more the subtle type who just casually happens to continuously steer the conversation toward this new idea for a book that you have. Either way, you’re infatuated with the idea of writing a novel and it seems like the coolest and awesome-st thing you could do with your time right now.
Enjoy this happy feeling now, because you won’t be feeling this way for long.
2. “Okay… I should actually start to write this thing.”
You’ve done your research. Okay, you’ve done a lot of research. But more is always better, right? You might need to know what potential ectoplasmic food sources alien bodies could process when you’re writing your Regency romance.
When your mother asks you if you’re making good use of the local library for your research, you laugh. Who needs that when hours of Tumblr and stalking strangers on Instagram would suffice? All real research is done online nowadays.
And for that matter, forget actual socialising. Who needs friends and family? You know they’ll only slow you down, so you tell them all to stay a fair distance away till you write your first draft. This is a great moment both in your own history and the history of the world; you could accidentally write the next The Great Gatsby.
3. “This isn’t too bad at all. I don’t know why writers complain. I’ve already gotten a hundred words down.”
You’ve started writing, and sure, the first paragraph might have been a little hard, but it’s really not too bad at all. You don’t know why writers are always complaining about how much work they have left to do on their works in progress. They could just hand their work off to you and you’d be able to finish their novels for them. I don’t know why it takes George RR Martin more than five years to write a book. This is easy.
4. “So… If my story ends on chapter three, can I still call it a novel?”
Every conflict your protagonist has had has resolved itself. Every problem your protagonist faced is neatly tied of and you’re only on chapter three. Maybe it’s because you’re doing such a great job at this whole writing thing? But something tells you it’s not supposed to be this way…
So you continue forcing yourself to sit down at your desk or that coffee shop day after day until your protagonist moves past page 50.
5. “Why won’t anyone talk to me? Even my characters aren’t talking to me.”
You feel so alone. You feel so alone.
Where is everyone? Do your friends secretly hate you and only hang out with you to get raw materials for their secret meetings without you to talk about all your weird ticks and habits? That must be the case, as they haven’t called once since last Tuesday. Your friends probably meet twice a week to discuss what a horrible person you are. …Even worse, they probably discuss how your writing sucks.
You know that to the regular person on the street, these thoughts don’t sound normal. In fact, one might say that they sound “paranoid,” but the regular person on the street hasn’t met your friends.
6. “I can’t do this”
You can’t write. There isn’t a thing your characters could say that they haven’t said to each other already. You’re doomed. The muse has left you. This book is a no go.
And yet, you can’t give up. You’ve already passed the halfway point. You can’t put half a novel to waste.
7. “The end…or not.”
Somehow you made it through the sagging middle of your story. Maybe you learned of your nondiscriminatory caffeine tastes. You’re not coffee or tea. You’re both. Simultaneously.
You remembered your friends and family haven’t called because you barked at them the one time they did. Something about how they “don’t respect your artistic nature when they call to invite you to lunch.” Who knows what that was about, but you can’t wait to invite them to lunch to tell them about the novel you finally finished.
Your room is a mess. Your house is a mess. You are a mess. But you made it all the way to “The End.” That’s what counts. You’re done. Your relationships with the characters is so tortured, you never want to think about the book again.
And then you remember you have to edit the damn thing.
Anna Caltabiano’s latest book The Time of the Clockmaker (number 2 in her Seventh Miss Hatfield series) is available from The Guardian bookshop.
