The Basic 500
Writing a novel when you don't have time to write a novel
My first novel was published in 2014, which already seems a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Over the past decade and change, I’ve written eight published novels and ghost-written two and a half.
A big part of being a writer in the modern era is doing events: literary festivals, library talks, book groups, writing classes. I love doing events not just because they’re a break from writing and a chance to catch up with other writers and readers, but because you always get at least one or two questions that nobody has asked before.
I also hear some questions again and again, which I don't mind in the least, because firstly it's natural that there will be some aspects of being a writer that everyone is interested in, and secondly answering the same question multiple times gives me a chance to really think about the answer.
One of the questions I'm consistently asked, whether at events or just when people find out I'm a writer in conversation, is: “How do you find the time to write a novel?”
I think there are two main reasons people always ask this: either they're awestruck about how anyone could sit down and write enough words to fill an entire book, or they're aspiring writers who would like to give it a go, but don't know how they can fit in the time to do all that writing. A mainstream commercial novel these days is usually somewhere between 80,000 and 120,000 words. Whichever way you cut it, that's a lot of words. I can completely understand why the size of the task intimidates people, because it intimidated the hell out of me before I gave it a try.
All writers are asked the “How do you find the time?” question. The glib answer is “One word at a time.” The answer that's closer to the truth for me is “Five hundred words at a time.”
When I first thought seriously about writing a novel, I realised that I would have to structure my time so that I could write every day (or as near as I could manage). I read a lot of advice that suggested I'd need to aim for a thousand words a day. Hell, Stephen King does at least two thousand a day, seven days a week. That freaked me out. For me, sitting down at the desk after a long day in the real world, in the knowledge that I'd have to write such a big chunk of words, would be a one-way ticket to writer's block.
My turning point was talking to a friend at work and bemoaning the fact that, with a full-time day job, a part-time night job and a young family, it would be tough to find the time to write a thousand words a day. His advice was simple: “Could you write five hundred words a day.”
I thought about it. Five hundred seemed a little more doable. But it couldn't really be that simple, could it?
I did some calculations. Five hundred a day, six days a week, makes 3,000 words a week. That's over 12,000 words in a month, which would be close to the word count of the longest story I'd ever written at that point. In six months, at that pace, I'd have around 80,000 words, which is a novel. I remembered John Grisham saying he wrote his first novel at the rate of one page a day until it was done. Suddenly, the impossible undertaking seemed almost... possible.
So I tried it out. Every night, I sat down with the intention of writing five hundred words. Most nights, I didn't stick to that. Most nights, once I got started, I wrote more than five hundred words. Sometimes a lot more. Freed from the pressure of having to meet a high word count, I relaxed and got into the daily routine. The other thing it did was get me in the habit of being able to write anywhere. If I had a half hour in a coffee shop or on a train journey, it was an opportunity to get my words for the day done. If I had my laptop, great. If not, I could write longhand and type it up later.
It doesn't take long to write five hundred words. When I put my mind to it, I can get the basic five hundred down in fifteen or twenty minutes. Even with some procrastination time and wasting a while on socials or ‘research’ when I first sit down, I can get it all done in an hour, no problem. If you have time to walk the dog, go jogging, or commit to a half-hour soap opera, you have time to write a book.
To this day, I still rely on that method. Even though I have deadlines now and I know I'll need to average quite a bit more than five hundred a day in order to hit them, I can always fool myself into getting started by promising myself I can stop at five hundred. Occasionally I do, but more often than not, I'll be walking away from the keyboard with another eight hundred, a thousand, even two thousand words in the bank.
If you're reading this and you've been trying to find the time to write a novel, stop thinking about that mountain of words you need to climb.
Just think about the basic five hundred.
My new thriller, 138 Main, comes out in the spring, and you can pre-order it here.
Reading
I’ve been dipping into Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales, which is appropriately dark and atmospheric for the season.
Writing
Getting back into my first draft of book two, which is going… well, it’s going. I also received the first pass page proofs of the new book. Which is exciting.
Doing
I hung out at the inaugural Venice Noir in November and caught up with some author buddies like Anna Mazzola, Ian Rankin and Erin Kelly as well as meeting some new ones like Philip Gwynne Jones and Effie Merryl. Aside from that I did as you would expect: ate a lot of pasta, took pictures of canals, and kept a wary eye out for small red-coated figures.
I also chaired Neil Lancaster at Waterstones Newton Mearns for the paperback publication of his excellent thriller When Shadows Fall.
Listening
I tend to write to instrumental music (the subject of a future installment, no doubt). In more lyrical moments, I’ve been listening to A Life Less Ordinary after seeing Ash at SWG3, and Pure Shores by All Saints, motivated by belatedly catching up on the excellent Girlbands Forever on iPlayer.
See you in fourteen…