I am in the final stretch of the first draft of my zombie apocalypse novel. I started writing this one because I wanted something lighthearted and humorous – think of it as a zombie rom-com, in the vein of Warm Bodies – and because I wanted to have a change of scene before I started rewriting A Landscape of Shadow’s sequel.
I learn something from every book I write, and this one (which we’ll call TAD for the moment, as I haven’t committed to the title yet) is no different. Sometimes I relearn the same lessons but in new ways, so the things I’m about to say aren’t necessarily revolutionary.
But without further ado, here are three things I’ve learned from writing novel number thirty-nine.
CONTRAST will teach you so much. I went from working on a 130k+ adult fantasy about a superpowered woman and the ethics of power to a 60k-ish romantic comedy set in modern time. I didn’t have over 400 pages for slow-burn romance or hyper-detailed character development. While I absolutely loved the lack of time/page constraint in ALoS and used it to my full advantage, it has been a fun challenge to work in a much smaller scope.
CONSISTENCY gets the job done. Every. Single. Time. I didn’t set any real goals for how quickly I would write TAD. When my schedule was busy, I’d set aside thirty minutes or so to write; but otherwise, I let it happen as it happened and didn’t stress too much about it. Writing this book was like active recovery before getting back to ALoS2.
But because I’ve spent so many years building consistency into my nature as a writer, I found that the book still wrote itself very quickly. I’m actually kind of baffled at how quickly it’s coming to a close, because it doesn’t feel like I worked that hard.
The truth of the matter is, I’ve spent twenty years practicing this type of consistency. It wasn’t effortless. It was twenty years in the making. Whether you’ve been writing for twenty years, ten years, one year, or three months, it is never too early or too late to build discipline into your writing habits.
I really want the third lesson to be another C because patterns, but I have to go with FLEXIBILITY. I thought the book was going to have a slightly different vibe to it, but the more I wrote, the more that preconceived idea began to fall apart. I had to make a choice whether I would force it back to the original vision or let it become what it wanted.
And, as I usually do, I said YOLO and followed the new threads! For me, that has always been a huge part of what allows a story to flow: you have to actually allow the flow. Does this sometimes make for a headache down the road? Yes. It would take someone far smarter than I to write a perfect book on the first try. Does the flow sometimes lie to you and dump you in a dead end? Also yes.
But it has also taken me on some of the most organic and lovely storytelling adventures, so I’ll keep following the magic, wherever it takes me.
What are some of your favorite lessons you’ve learned from writing?
