On the internet, we’re all supposed to be super-success stories, our Bugatti Veyrons lined up in the 5-Star restaurants we’re taking our supermodel girlfriends to so that they can meet our billionaire friends.
Also, the internet is the place to blog about how you succeed. Never about how you fail.
So I’m breaking the mould here a little. Apologies for that.
Today I’m going to talk about how I failed to write a novel in a day.
The Plan
I don’t do so well with long term projects. One answer to this might be to work on that. That’s why this year I worked out a publishing schedule.
The second way that I’ve found to deal with the fact that I hate long term projects is to make what would be long term projects into short term projects.
I like writing fiction, but since the Kindle Unlimited 1.0 gold rush is over, short fiction isn’t all that profitable. (Well, actually it can be – but that’s another project for another day.)
Then I ran the figures. I worked out that if I used dictation software, spoke really quickly and used Plotto and some of my own templates, I could spend a couple of hours planning, five hours writing and the rest of the day editing.
In short, I wanted to write a novel in one day. This wasn’t an idle day dream either. I’m sitting right next to a breakdown of chapters, locations and characters. I’ve got a stopwatch to time precisely how long each chapter has taken to write so far.
How Not To Write A Novel : The Case Of The Untrained Dragon
How Not To Write A Novel In One Day: Not Knowing What Your Story Is About
The sound you hear is the sound of H.M.S. Obvious coming into port. Normally, when you write a piece of fiction, it ruminates in your mind. Your characters get life, plot knots sort themselves out and you gradually inhabit the world you’re writing into existence.
Speaking of which…
Dictating Weird Stuff
If you’re speaking aloud your work, dictating as opposed to writing, then you’re going to come across a snag if you’re writing anything interesting. You might not think you care about transcribing a murder scene or a sex scene or a great Shakespeare-style confession of love, but it’s a whole different ball game when you have to speak it aloud. Also, clunky passages are more painful when you actually hear them.
Editing
I have a whole big topic on editing to come at some point (probably tomorrow EDIT: It’s Up) but when you’re writing a huge amount of words really quickly, editing takes a slightly different form.
Sequels
Characters and World Building
When you’re reading, you want a fully fleshed out world. You need those indicators of a wider universe to feel like you’re not following the lives of cardboard characters.
Closing Thoughts
These are just a few of the pitfalls I’ve come across in the past two days. By the end of today, I’ll have written twenty-seven chapters out of a planned thirty five. That’s Day Two. So it’s an utter failure in some ways, but I’m still pushing the pace pretty massively when it’s considered correct practice in traditional publishing to release one book a year.
Hopefully then I’ll be able to write a “how to actually write a novel in one day” article. Until then, back to the laboratory for version two of this ridiculous experiment.
P.S. I’m fully aware that this is going to be endless fun, because after I’ve completed a one day novel, I’ll proceed to try and write a one day novel that somebody will actually want to read.
P.P.S. If any of you have written a novel in one day, let me know in the comments. I’d hate to think I’m rediscovering the Americas with this project.