writing a novel – Lee Duigon

ArtStation - Chess with ghosts

So what’s it like to write a novel?

I had a new insight into this, yesterday. For me, writing a novel is like playing chess against an invisible opponent about whom you know nothing at all–nothing but the moves of his chessmen on the board.

I used to like to dope everything out in notebooks before I wrote a word. Four of those books (horror novels) got published. Forty didn’t. So now what I do is just ask God to give me the story and to guide me in telling it. Mostly I just pick up my pen and get to work. Let the invisible opponent surprise me! Most of those surprises turn out to be things I can use. Had one just the other day that really got me grinning.

I did have to write a lot of thankless unpublished novels before I ever sold anything. At the time I thought it wasn’t fair. But maybe those books were a gate I had to go through before I could get any farther down the road–tollbooths, as it were, along the highway. (Ooh, that’s corny!)

The lesson I’ve been taught is to welcome the surprises… and build on them.

I wonder if that applies to real life.

Kiingo's Writing Thesaurus - SWELTERING

It was all I could do to crank out two and a half pages today. Holy moly, it’s hot! But if I try to write indoors, I’ll be interrupted again and again by nuisance phone calls.

In writing a continuing series, each new book has to pick up where the previous book left off. Can’t expect the reader to remember! It’s hard enough for me to remember. I have to revisit the last manuscript again and again, lest I forget where I put the various characters and why I put them there. Only then can I launch into the next story.

I don’t have a title yet, and that’s a handicap. I’m working on a book that will have two different climaxes. One is already in the bag, and I thank the Lord for that. But the other is still up in the air. The title will somehow have to link the two together. I pray it’ll soon pop into my head.

I do wish it was about ten degrees cooler!