Hello, writers! We are so excited to be back! Jill and I have been working hard all summer updating the website, making plans for the fall, and adding on some new options for building community and writing workshops. Details for those will be announced next Wednesday!

One of the updates I made over the summer was to our “most popular posts” page, which had become wildly out of date. Now it’s our 10 Most Popular Posts, and you’ll also find links to 3 popular series we’ve done.

Another update from the last few months is that the 100-for-100 is humming along nicely! This is the longest that I’ve ever personally participated, so that’s fun. Every year I say “maybe this is my year” and now it really is looking like this will be my year to complete the challenge! We have 187 writers still participating!

One of the questions I received over the summer was from a writer who had never written a novel before and wanted my thoughts on how to go about it. This is an excellent question!

This statement is repeated about a thousand times in Write Your Novel, written by me, Jill WIlliamson, and Shannon Dittemore, but it’s worth repeating here: There’s no one right way to write a novel. Eventually, if you write enough novels, you’ll figure out a system that generally work for you, but there’s no magic formula that Real Writers know and that you have to figure out before you can do the job properly.

Fumbling around is just part of the learning process when it comes to writing a novel. There’s no getting around it, but there are some things you can do to help yourself out.

6 Tips for writing your first novel:

Limit your learning resources.

Here’s where I see some new writers struggle: They want to write a novel, and they start by sitting down with ten “how to write” books, listening to a string of podcast episodes, and subscribing to every writing website they can find.

I understand this impulse. If we’re going to do this novel-writing thing, we want to do it right!

And I love learning more about writing. I’ve been writing novels for over twenty years, and I still buy craft books and listen to writing podcasts. I shudder to think of where I would be without teachers like Elizabeth Gilbert, Stephen King, Jessica Brody, K.M. Weiland, Anne Lammott, our own Jill Williamson, and many others.

But the last thing you want to do early on is educate yourself into paralysis. (Ellie Sweet goes through this in The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet!) I’ve had seasons as a writer where I go to a conference, learn a ton of things that I’m doing wrong and need to fix, and then I can’t seem to write a single sentence. I don’t want to use passive language! This needs to be deep POV! Am I showing or am I telling? I can’t think of a strong enough verb!

Yes, there’s a lot to learn. But you don’t need to learn it all right now. Right now the most important thing is that you:

Write.

That’s your number one job right now as you embark on your first novel, closely followed by having fun. Write and have fun. Write without worrying about if it’s good. It doesn’t matter if your work is derivative, or if you’re using commas incorrectly, or if an FBI agent would absolutely never say that. Maybe later it’ll matter, but not now. Right now what matters most is that you’re writing the story the way it comes to you and that you’re having a good time doing so.

Don’t show it to anybody yet.

I’ve found that the best way to write without worrying about what others will think is to not show my first draft to anyone.

You might eventually find that you’re the type of writer who works best when you’re receiving feedback along the way. Some writers thrive in groups where everybody turns in a chapter each week for critique, but if you’re like me–and like many other writes I know–you might find that the first draft is too early in the process to let others in. I used to show people my works in progress all the time, claiming I wanted “honest feedback” when really I wanted to be told how amazing my book was. If the response was negative, my confidence was shaken and I lost my energy for the story.

If you’re in the process of writing your first novel, it can be tempting to show others because we’re excited or we’re feeling isolated and we want to bring others in with us. I know it’s tough, but when you’re working on your first novel, I would lean toward talking about your book with others (if you want) instead of letting others read the first draft.

But if you do show your first draft to people, choose wisely.

If you decide to ignore that advice and share your early, incomplete drafts with others, be thoughtful about who you pick. Ideally, you want early readers who are enthusiastic about what you’re trying to do, and who use their words thoughtfully. It’s also helpful to be clear with your expectations of them. For example, you might say, “This is a first draft, so I’m more interested in your general opinions about characters and plot, not a line-by-line edit.”

Try to finish the book you’ve started.

A lot of new writers have a tendency to rewrite their early chapters over and over, trying to get them perfect, before writing the whole novel. I used to do this and it really stunted my growth for a long time. The best thing to do is move on with the business of writing the whole story before you try to make chapters perfect. Sometimes you can overcome this tendency by leaving yourself some notes about things you want to fix later.

Even if your finished manuscript is 30,000 words instead of the 80,000 you were hoping for. Even if you realize that your novel is really Hunger Games fanfiction. Even if you’ve written three-quarters of the book before you learn about head-hopping and now know you’ll have to fix everything . . . carry on and finish.

“Keep calm and write on” is a great mantra for writing your first draft of your first novel. Or any first draft, really.

You will learn so much more from finishing your book (regardless of what a mess it is) than you will from writing and rewriting early chapters trying to make them perfect. You can fix a lot in edits–you will fix a lot in edits, we all do!–but you can’t fix what isn’t written.

Shannon Hale says, “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” I think this is the most helpful mentality I’ve ever heard about first drafts. Keep shoveling in that sand.

You won’t finish every book you write, and that’s fine, but “finishing a first draft” is the best goal you can have as a new novelist.

Keep going.

You will get discouraged. You’ll have good writing sessions and bad writing sessions. You might run out of ideas around chapter three, but then have a new story idea you’re excited about and want to write. Writing novels is an endurance art, similar to how distance runners are endurance athletes.

I spent four years writing the novel that became my debut. That book was about 55k, and I stopped working multiple times. I was so tired of it that I remember when Me, Just Different went before the pub board, I joked to my brand new writer friend, Roseanna, “If they decide not to publish it, at least I’ll get a break. I’m so sick of working on this book.”

They bought it, fortunately, and they wanted books two and three as well. Books two and three didn’t exist, but they were due in six months and a year. Cue panic about how long book one took to write!

But it turns out that in those four years of writing and rewriting (and rewriting again) Me, Just Different, I hadn’t just been writing a book, I’d been growing an author too. I had learned so much in the process of creating a finished product that I had no problems getting two and three turned in on time. I even turned them in early.

Writing novels will never feel easy, but it will feel easier. That will only happen, however, if you keep going.

If you’ve finished a full first draft, what tips would you add to my list?

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.