The First Novel, The Instrument
The hardest part of writing any novel is the blank page puzzle.
To get past this you first need to pick the tool that you will be composing your novel on. This sounds easy, but no two writers are the same and what works for one writer is poison for others.
Some of you will want to do your first draft by hand. Almost all of us wrote our first stories this way. The greatest writing in the history of the English language was done this way. Shakespeare and Dickens wrote this way. I understand that the most successful writer in history J. K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book on legal pads.
There is the old school typewriter. I have a pair of them in my basement. I wrote my first unpublished book on one of these almost twenty years ago. I have to admit that there is something reassuring about the sound of the type hitting the paper. If you got one of them laying around and can still find the ink for it then go for it.
Next up is the wordprocessor or computer. Most of us will end up in front of one of these whether it is the first draft or the one that we will send off to be published. I find the key to this is finding the program that works best for you. You could go simple notepad. You could use word perfect or office. You could use a universal program like Open office. My go to program is word perfect.
I am comfortable with it and I love the editing features. I am writing this post using word perfect. You could use one of the expensive software programs designed for authors or you could you a speech program to dictate your novel.
The only tool that you must show up with is your imagination. Writing a novel is about the willingness to work hard and to allow your imagination to be the star. As you write you will find your characters become more and more real to you. They will become over time as real as friends and family.
I wish you luck and I hope that you will respond to this post by like it on stumbleupon and take the time to read a chapter from my novel Calling Vicki.
The hardest part of writing any novel is the blank page puzzle.
To get past this you first need to pick the tool that you will be composing your novel on. This sounds easy, but no two writers are the same and what works for one writer is poison for others.
Some of you will want to do your first draft by hand. Almost all of us wrote our first stories this way. The greatest writing in the history of the English language was done this way. Shakespeare and Dickens wrote this way. I understand that the most successful writer in history J. K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book on legal pads.
There is the old school typewriter. I have a pair of them in my basement. I wrote my first unpublished book on one of these almost twenty years ago. I have to admit that there is something reassuring about the sound of the type hitting the paper. If you got one of them laying around and can still find the ink for it then go for it.
Next up is the wordprocessor or computer. Most of us will end up in front of one of these whether it is the first draft or the one that we will send off to be published. I find the key to this is finding the program that works best for you. You could go simple notepad. You could use word perfect or office. You could use a universal program like Open office. My go to program is word perfect.
I am comfortable with it and I love the editing features. I am writing this post using word perfect. You could use one of the expensive software programs designed for authors or you could you a speech program to dictate your novel.
The only tool that you must show up with is your imagination. Writing a novel is about the willingness to work hard and to allow your imagination to be the star. As you write you will find your characters become more and more real to you. They will become over time as real as friends and family.
I wish you luck and I hope that you will respond to this post by like it on stumbleupon and take the time to read a chapter from my novel Calling Vicki.
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