speculative future... now!

June 10, 2020 5:11 PM

I would like to write a SF/F novel this year, no matter how bad!!! Any suggestions on setting myself up to cross the finish line?

I always wanted to write novels. As an adult, I have occasionally written and even published a few nonfic essays, and even a little stop motion activity book for kids! But I remain pretty terrible at fiction/short stories. I have this fixed mindset belief that "ah, I'm just no good with plot or characters" and that's kept me in this rut of contemplating, then anxiously moving on from goals of writing something longer...

.. but lately a specific world has come into my head, and a few images of characters navigating that world, and ideas of what their lives might be like. I want it all to exist so badly. I've made my peace with the fact that yes, it's likely going to be Bad, and that's totally ok! I want those characters and ideas expressed on the page, even if just for me. I know I'm an ideal candidate for NaNoWriMo, but I'd rather get going this summer. Do you have any suggestions for someone in my position?

I love rituals, and If this wasn't quarantine, I'd probably find a coffee shop or corner of a diner and commit to showing up there several times a week at the exact same time to write/people watch/eat hashbrowns. I'm currently working my way through Wonderbook and I love it. Also I'm looking at some online creative writing classes, and I see one via UCLA Extension that seems nearly perfect EXCEPT it's oriented around short stories and kinda $$$ (but I'm still considering!)

I really enjoy participating in online communities and find low-key social engagement very motivating-- any suggestions around SF/F writers? Particularly queer writers?

Thank you!!

posted by elephantsvanish to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

1. Take copious notes for months
2. Do Nanowrimo in November
3. Know you will have a LOT of editing to do

Nano is free and there are wonderful online and local communities that you can be a part
of as much or as little as you like. I am still friends with some of my 2010 Nano group.
posted by maya at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hi, I'm a novelist!

Just start! Start writing tomorrow. Keep writing. You don't need to go at NaNoWriMo pace (1667 words a day). Just make it a daily habit. 500 words a day is a good beginning. String three of those days together and you have a chapter. You will probably want to write more than that some days, as you work up a rhythm. Great! Do it! In 6 months you'll have something vaguely book shaped.

This is how I wrote my first full-length manuscript and it's still how I write books today, 15 years later. Writing books isn't hard. It's mostly just long. Just keep going, until you reach THE END.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:57 PM on June 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

Write every day. I know this seems like dumb, obvious advice, but you'd be surprised at what a difference it makes. Just commit to writing every single day, no excuses for skipping, even just an alibi sentence if you have to. (I mean, okay, if you get really ill or have an emergency, don't stress about writing on top of that, but other than that.) Just sit down and write every. single. day. And I mean write every single day, not edit every single day, or reread what you've already written every single day and tinker with it, but write something, no matter how garbage you think it is.

Personally, I picked 400 words a day, because I was inspired by Terry Pratchett: "For more than three years I wrote more than 400 words every day. I mean, every calendar day. If, in those pre-portable days, I couldn't get to a keyboard, I wrote hard the previous night and caught up the following day, and if it ever seemed that it was easy to do the average I upped the average." I just write fan fiction as a hobby, but aiming for an average of 400 words a day got me to finish a novel-length fic.
posted by yasaman at 6:05 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's for younger people but there is camp nanowrimo over the summer, if you're looking for that kind of support.
posted by freethefeet at 6:10 PM on June 10, 2020

Hello! I'm a sf/f novelist and I have Opinions.

There is NO sacrosanct rule of writing a novel other than that, at some point, you gotta get the words down. (We have not yet invented a device that telepathically reads the novel out of your brain. Or anyway, no one's sold me mine yet!) HOW you get the words down is up to you.

If you are new to this, you probably don't yet know what works for you. Please allow yourself some grace to experiment, and to keep a record (if you are the kind of person helped by recordkeeping) so that you can keep track of Advice That Works For You and Advice That Messes You Up.

I am admittedly not as long-established as other writers, but I am doing pretty well for myself and guess what, I do NOT write every day. I would have a meltdown if I had to write every day, but surprise, I do manage to produce and publish novels!

Some writers are helped by committing to write every day. You might be one of them! But some writers are helped by taking some days off now and then to allow their brains time to process, and you might be one of them. Only you can answer for yourself, by experimentation and/or observation, which type of writer you are. Almost any blanket advice is bound to be Very Right for certain writers ("write every day," "write to music," "write in complete silence," "write at the same time every day," "change it up every so often," "write linearly," "jump around as the mood suits you," the list could go on) and Very Wrong for others. So if you try a piece of writing advice (either from here, or a book, or elsewhere on the internet), and it does not help you, ditch it and move on. The problem isn't you, it's that there is NO one-size-fits-all advice. All a piece of advice like "write every day" means is that for someone out there, "write every day" is helpful--but there are just as many writers who cannot function using that advice, and they are perfectly good writers too.

For example, you've probably heard of the distinction between Plotters (people who outline the novel in advance) and Pantsers (people who make it up as they go). There is not a One True Way. Some people are plotters because their creativity and writingness is activated by having a road map. Other people, if they know the road map ahead of time, lose all interest in writing the novel because having that process of discovery and not-knowing is what motivates them. Some people are pantsers because they are guided by their instincts and love being surprised by the twists and turns of the novel as it emerges. Other people, if they don't have that road map, flail and get lost. Your job as an emerging writer will be to figure out which pieces of advice work for YOU, rather than taking any single writer (including me) on faith.

You might be one of the writers who polish as you go, making sure that everything is as perfect as you can make it in the moment, because otherwise it nags you so badly you can't continue. I am not one of them, but I know very good writers who are (Arkady Martine is one). Or you might be one of the writers who spews out a shitty rough draft and loves to fix things in revisions (this is me--but this is not everyone).

There are TONS of writing methods and a ton of different kinds of advice out there because, surprise surprise, we are all individuals with different modes and methods and different ways of being creative. Good luck finding what applies to you, and good luck with your novel!
posted by yhlee at 6:17 PM on June 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

I am admittedly not as long-established as other writers, but I am doing pretty well for myself and guess what, I do NOT write every day. I would have a meltdown if I had to write every day, but surprise, I do manage to produce and publish novels!

Just a note that I also don't write every day. I took weekends off even before I had a kid, and now, well, you know. You write when you can.

But you don't stop.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:19 PM on June 10, 2020

There's a distinction between "keep writing at whateve r pace" (which is necessary for the book to be finished) and "you must write on every single day" (which is one way to write a novel, but not the only way). The latter is advice that gets tossed around a lot and helps some writers, but is toxic to others.
posted by yhlee at 6:22 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

For years, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write science fiction. Or poetry. Or science-fiction poetry. Or something. I talked about how much I wanted to write. But you know what? I never wrote.

Today, I am a writer. That's how I make my living. I've written books and I've written for magazines and I have a long-running successful blog (thanks MeFi!). You know what made me a writer? I stopped talking about writing and actually wrote. That is how you become a writer. You write. There's no magic involved.

This was a tough thing for me to grok when I was younger. I thought there were hoops I had to jump through. I thought there were gatekeepers or that there was some sort of standard path I had to follow. There isn't. You are what you do. If you want to be a writer, you write. If you want to have written something, you have to write it.

Classes are fine. They've helped me. But communities less so. In my experience -- which I'll grant is only my experience -- writing groups, etc. are filled with aspiring writers who have lots of opinion but who produce very little. I got so much more accomplished when I stopped hanging out in writing groups.

If you want to write, write. The end. If you want to cross that finish line, the best thing you can do is take the first step from the starting line. Then the next step. And the one after that. Just keep going. Eventually, you will finish. And maybe you won't run the perfect race. That's okay. Your next race will be better. And because this metaphor is imperfect, you get the additional benefit of being able to revise your race before anybody ever sees it. Isn't that fun?

Okay. That's enough of me blathering. Reading about writing isn't writing. Talking to other writers (or would-be writers) about writing isn't writing. There's only one thing that actually is writing...and that's writing.

Go forth and write!
posted by jdroth at 8:24 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm a science fiction and fantasy writer. And I second yhlee's advice, every single word of it. Evaluate every piece of writing advice you get according to whether it makes you want to write. If it makes you feel guilty, stressed, or discouraged, it's bad advice *for you *.
You are about to discover what kind of writer you are, and what works for you.
You have already made the most important commitment, which is to say "I'll write it, even if I know it's not going to be perfect".
Here are some things that work for me.
* I start each writing session by writing what comes NEXT in the story, not rewriting what I wrote the previous day.
* I don't talk about my story to anyone until the first draft is finished. Talking about it bleeds off the energy and excitement that should be going into the writing.
* I keep a seperate note open on my computer for questions that pop up while I'm writing, like "how do bullets really work?" or "but why didn't they just ask him what his name is" so that I can move on with the writing and not get derailed with research or figuring out plot holes. On days I don't feel motivated to write, I work my way through the questions document.
Good luck! Writing books can be difficult but it can also be such fun. Like a rewarding, amazing game or puzzle thats all yours to decide what the rules are.
posted by Zumbador at 9:59 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am a writer of various kinds of books. I endorse all the excellent advice you have received above (even when it is contradictory!) Like yhlee, I think there are no hard and fast rules that apply to all writers, but here are some things about my own process that may be useful to you. I've included some links to my answers previous AskMe threads, and it might be worth reading the other answers in those threads, too.

•  I engage with my WIP every weekday. The nature of that engagement changes depending on where I am in the writing process. If I'm trying to generate general ideas, I engage by taking long walks and letting my mind wander, bringing it consciously back to my project. Once I know where the story is going, I engage by sitting at my computer and writing a specific number of words per day.

• I make a distinction between input goals (EG, number of minutes spent) and output goals (EG, number of words on the page). Input goals are most useful for me in the early brainstorming stages. Later, when I have a general sense of my story, I switch to output goals.

• I have a specific ritual that I do every time I write. Basically, I use Pavlovian conditioning on myself to get in a writing frame of mind.

• I try to be kind to myself when I'm not churning out as many words as I'd like.

• I use Ben Franklin's technique to learn from writers I admire. More generally, I found Peak by Anders Ericsson to be extremely helpful in adapting a growth mindset about my abilities.

• I've been writing for decades and I still don't know how to write a good first draft of a novel. The only thing I know is how to do is get a crappy first draft finished, and then make each draft a little better than the last. If I do that often enough, I end up with something publishable. On the plus side, this makes it much easier for me to get my first draft written, because I don't lose heart if it stinks.

• I have figured out all of the above through trial and error over many years, and I'm still figuring out new things all the time. Pay non-judgmental attention to what works for you, and if you have a bad or non-productive day, don't beat yourself up. It's all useful data in your research into your own process. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, " I did not fail 800 times before I discovered the lightbulb. I successfully eliminated 800 possibilities."

Finally… while there is no single correct way of getting words on the page… all writers have to put words down sometime. You can probably google the average wordcount for your genre. That will tell you how many words you’ll have to put in order over the next 12 months. Be kind to yourself as you try to get those words written… but not so kind that you don’t write them at all!
posted by yankeefog at 4:57 AM on June 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Participate in nanowrimo! You don't have to commit to the standard 50,000 in the month goal if that seems to fast, but you commit to some goal and track it. It's very good at getting you to actually do the thing you've been wanting to do.

Aside from the main nanowrimo in November, there are more casual Nanowrimo camps in other months, and the Nanowrimo forums are always open and friendly. I recommend the forums highly, although they do get much livelier in November than in other months.
posted by Zephyr at 8:52 PM on June 17, 2020