A year ago, I knew next to nothing about writing a novel.
A year later, I know a little bit. Enough to feel confident when I might not should be.
How do you start? Where do you start?
The easy answer I’ve seen all over the internet is to just write. But if you’re not confident in your abilities, don’t love your ideas, can’t find your voice, or any other plethora of stumbling blocks, to just write feels like a slap in the face.
It’s not wrong, but it doesn’t help much either.
I’m not professing to be any sort of expert here. I’m unpublished and unproven.
Years ago I read this idea that there’s always someone one or two steps behind you. So, my goal is to chronicle my journey, my methods, and the resources I’m using, with the goal being to help someone along the way.
Ideas to life
A year ago, I didn’t know I wanted to pursue this full-time. It started off as a kernel of an idea that exploded further and further until I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I spent months worldbuilding, creating, and jotting down ideas just for fun. Then I hit critical mass.
Education
My approach started off with the assumption that I knew nothing about how to be an author. My degree is in music. My career has been in digital marketing and small business logistics. Not exactly related.
I needed a crash-course that I could devour and feel like I at least knew something.
This is where my favorite author of all-time comes in: Brandon Sanderson.
I love his books, but more than that, I love what Sanderson did/does for new writers. This man has enough wealth that he could disappear forever, and what does he do?
He still teaches Creative Writing at BYU. And better yet, he’s recorded several years of his lectures and posted them for free on YouTube. You can find links to all of them in my resources page.
This is hours and hours of free university-level content to teach you how to be a better writer from one of the best fantasy writers alive today. He lectures, he answers questions, he even goes as far as to outline publishers, how to query, and pitfalls to watch out for. It’s a literal goldmine of industry knowledge.
I watched all of these once through and took notes. This is where I started. Since then, I’ve watched them through again, and some of the videos a third or fourth time.
Start here. If you want to write fantasy, especially that with magic systems in it, you can’t ask for better than these videos.
I can almost guarantee after you feel somewhat educated in this industry, you will feel better about starting your own writing.
Trunk Novels
The idea of a “trunk novel” is that it’s an early book that will never see the light of day. It’s so bad that, even for a published successful author such as Sanderson, it would be horrible for anyone to read.
Above all else, it’s become clear to me that it’s okay to be bad. This isn’t a journey that most, if anyone, are going to get right the first time. It takes practice. A skill must be honed.
Even if the idea is great and you want to revisit it, the first draft may be terrible. That’s okay too. Write the terrible first draft. Leave it alone. Come back months later and laugh at how bad it is. Then rewrite and improve it.
If Sanderson has trunk novels, so will you.
It’s scary
Even writing this here, now, is scary. No one wants to be judged for their works, especially if they themselves love it. Writing a novel isn’t easy, but that’s the fun of it right?
I will be a published author. And this is where I begin.