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In recent days, I’ve found difficulty in sitting down and opening my manuscript. Really and truly, that has been the hardest part of writing my story as of late. Once I’m in my chair and the document is on the screen, I have no need to worry. I start slow, taking furtive steps into the dark, prodding around, building an awareness of my surroundings. And soon, I’m hurtling forward, heedless of obstructions that threaten to trip me or bring me grinding to a halt.

I often compare this aspect of writing to personal fitness. The hardest part of working out is getting to the gym. Because once you’re there, you’ll at least do something. But convincing yourself to get off the couch, or get out of bed, and actually get to the gym–that’s where you’re most likely to fail.

Getting started is the hardest part. Whether you’re getting started for the first time ever, or just for the first time today.

If the actual writing is easy once I get going, that should bring me great comfort. But nonetheless, I do worry for consistent progress. Thus, I need to make it easier to get started every day. The question becomes: What keeps me from starting, and how can I circumnavigate those resistances?

Sometimes, my word count goals are to blame, for they can be intimidating in the short term. I find them helpful in the long term, for if I set daily goals, I can better anticipate how long each of my projects will take to complete. But if I tell myself on a given day that I have to write 1500 words, and I’m not feeling up to it, I’m likely not to write at all. The solution here is to allow myself to fall under the goal without feeling guilty. If I say to myself, “Just write 500 words and call it a day,” I’m much more likely to get something on the page. And 500 words is infinitely better than none. More often than not, I’ll have worked up some momentum after writing those 500 words, and I’ll write even more.

Having a routine can also increase the likelihood of working on my manuscript. For example, I currently work out upon waking up, then I write, then I read. Since I’ve made it a habit to sit down at the computer after my morning gym visit, I’m likely to do so even on days when I’m feeling off. The down side here comes when something throws off my routine. If I sleep in, or miss a gym visit, those may snowball into a further setbacks. If I’m used to writing at 10AM every day, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I don’t get back from the gym until 1PM, I may choose not to write at all that day. Thus, I cannot rely entirely on routine.

The biggest resistance that encroaches upon my writing is my social life. If friends make plans in the time that I’ve allocated to writing, I may end up choosing social time over writing time. When this becomes a consistent behavior, I find the best solution is to tell my friends ahead of time that I will be unavailable. If they know not to invite me out during my writing hours, then they’re working to keep my writing time sacred, too.

This is a hard balance to strike, though. Because letting myself relax, letting myself spend time with friends, and letting myself experience life positively influences my writing. So now and again, I need to let the pressure go.

These are the greatest resistances in my writing, and I imagine I won’t ever stop trying to adjust my schedule nor my mindset. The constant effort is what matters, though, and is what results in progress.

– AJG

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A great idea does not make a great novel. In fact, it takes several ideas to make a single novel. I may come up with a deeply immersive setting, but without a nuanced characters to explore it, I won’t hold a readers attention. I’ll also need to send these characters into conflict and develop that conflict in interesting ways. These are the ingredients of a story: plot, setting, and character. And almost every good novel has multiple ideas for each of those elements.

Epic fantasy novels have a whole world to flesh out, and they have plenty of pages to do so. Naturally, this requires dozens of ideas worth exploring. You can’t write thousands of pages about a world if you don’t have the ideas to populate it. But even if you’re not writing The Wheel of Time (4 million words across 14 books), you still need more than one idea.

Let’s look at a shorter book. Coraline by Neil Gaiman clocks in at roughly 30,000 words, and is technically considered a novella. Yet we have so many ideas here. We meet plethora of characters, each compelling in their own unique way. Like retired actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who put on shows for an audience of Scottish Terriers.

Although the main plot conflict resides between Coraline and Other Mother, we have subplots, too. Such as that of the ghost children, who cannot pass on without getting their souls back.

Even the house, which acts as the setting for pretty much the entire book, is many ideas rolled into one. In the real world, the house is boring and acts as a catalyst to get Coraline searching for adventure. In the Other World, the house is a trap, designed to lure Coraline closer to the beldam.

So if you want to write a novel, you’ll need more than one idea. Maybe you want to write a story in a post-apocalyptic, flooded Earth. That’s interesting, but you’ll need an equally and independently interesting protagonist to carry us through this world.

Maybe you also had a separate idea; you want to write a story about a girl with a sweet tooth and an aversion to social situations. You didn’t imagine her in a flooded world, but that’s okay. Put her there anyway, and see what happens. She’ll have a hard time finding candy if she doesn’t venture out into the high seas. And she won’t survive for long out there without a crew, which means she’ll have to deal with people. Already, we’ve got conflict.

Our plot might follow the sweet-tooth captain as she assembles a crew to track down an abandoned candy factory. But we’ll need interesting characters to fill out that crew, and interesting places on our flooded Earth for them to visit. You get the picture.

We don’t want to go overboard (ha, nautical pun) with ideas, though. To some extent, the amount of ideas should be proportional to our word count. Don’t include so many ideas that you don’t explore any of them in depth. But I more often found my early stories lacking strong ideas than overfilled with them.

The actionable takeaway is this; allow your many wonderful ideas to coalesce. Keep track of all your character, plot, and setting ideas. Find places to insert those ideas to drum up interesting situations where otherwise you might’ve felt lost or bored. And most of all, explore the ideas that excite you. Your excitement will keep you writing, and the more you write, the more you improve.

– AJG

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