Ok, so the title sounds a little presumptuous. But I know there are always people wondering what it takes to actually sit down and finish a book. I don't pretend to speak for everybody, and I don't pretend to have all of the answers, but I wanted to share what worked for me. I thought I'd share some advice from my own experiences with writing, and what to do when you write those final words and hold a finished novel in your hands.
1) Create an Outline (Or something to help keep the story together).
-I know that every writer has a different method, but writing an outline helped immensely as I put the book together. It definitely helped keep things in order and kept me more organized. One thing to remember, however, is that your outline is not the final say. If the book starts to lean in a different direction, let it lean. You can always rearrange things if you can't find a good place to fit one character or paragraph.
2) Write even when you don't feel like writing.
-If I had only written during the times where I was motivated, my novel would never have been completed. Some of my best work was written grudgingly, when I felt like doing something else but knew where my priorities should lie. If you take long breaks from your book you forget the characters and where they stand within the story. I took an eight month break from my novel and when I came back to it I had to spend so much more time reconnecting and reminding myself what was happening. Write often. Don't give up. Don't tell yourself you can't do it, because if you do then you'll end up being right.
3) Edit, edit, edit!
-You cannot write a book once and expect it to be a bestseller right away. You're expecting people to read your work, so why would you hand them anything less than your best? I cannot tell you exactly how much I edited, but I do know that I spent hundreds of hours checking for mistakes, fixing weak sentences, changing entire sections to make them work. The third version of the novel was significantly better than the first, and the fourth was a step above the third. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You have to be dedicated. You have to be willing to put in the work.You have to spend time editing, or else you're just setting yourself up for failure.
4) Be willing to sacrifice.
-This is a huge one. This was also the hardest thing for me. Once you've typed the last words of your novel and have started the editing process, there's something you have to tell yourself. You have to be willing to sacrifice. If a character's not fitting quite right, or a sentence doesn't flow like you'd want it to, then cut it out. Change whole paragraphs. Delete entire sections. Change things around. Just make it work. I wrote the beginning of my novel probably close to seven times, simply because I could never get it to sound quite how it should. There were sentences and paragraphs that I had loved and slaved over, but they didn't fit so they had to go. I went through and deleted several pages at one time on numerous occasions, and rewrote entire sections. I had to make it the best I could, and I could only do that if I was willing to let it go. But if you simply cannot force yourself to hit that delete key, you can also save the sentences or sections for later, during a part of the novel where they might fit better.
5) Let people read your work.
-It helped me a lot to have several people read my work and tell me what they thought needed to be changed. Other people don't think the same as you do, so if you have your book looked at from a different perspective, things that weren't apparent before suddenly become blatantly obvious. My mom wasn't the first person to read my novel, but when she did she helped a ton by going through and marking mistakes that she'd found and writing notes on things she liked or disliked. When she was finished I went through and fixed all of the mistakes and then made decisions on what to do with the rest of it that she had issues with. I had four others read my work before I dared sumbit it for publishing, and each time I came out with a new and improved version of the book. My novel would not have been even close to the point it is now if I hadn't let people read my work. Thank you to my guineau pigs (If I'm allowed to call you that): Betsy Cornell, my mother, Grandma Tucker and Grandma Roylance, and Jane Payne. I love you all.
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