So You Want to Write a Book? My Story, My Chaotic Process, and a Pep Talk

Lately, a few people have messaged me with some version of the same questions: How does this writing and publishing thing work? Where do I start? Is it even possible?

I love these messages. I really do. They also tend to land in my inbox during the part of my life where "reply to email" has been on my to-do list for six days and my brain is about 40 percent animal cracker crumbs. (Life with a toddler.) I hate making anyone wait for an answer they deserve, so I'm doing the sensible thing - writing it all down once, so I can send you a link instead of retyping the same email in a sleep-deprived haze.

Quick disclaimer before we start: I'm not a guru. By publishing standards, I'm not hugely successful. I'm a person who loves writing and is still figuring out some things out the hard way, mostly with sticky notes and Google.

How I got here (the short version)

I've always loved writing. Long before anything of mine was published, I wrote novels on my own just for fun, the kind that live in a sloppy notebook or a folder on your computer and never see daylight.

Then I started following Penny Reid and Smartypants Romance, mostly because I loved that they were doing unique things. When I saw they were open for book proposals, I did the scary thing and submitted my idea for Book Smart. They said yes. And the rest of Book Smart and Smart Move is history!

Then life happened. I had some health problems and then my baby girl, and I couldn't keep up with a publisher's deadlines anymore, so I went indie. Now I write as quickly as I can, which I'm hoping works out to one book per year. Time (and baby life) will tell! By indie standards, that's the approximate speed of a glacier. But my family is my top priority right now, and I've made my peace with my glacier.

My process (it's chaos)

If you looked over my shoulder while I work on a book, you would see sticky notes. So many sticky notes. You'd also see spreadsheets, scattered notes, brainstorming notes that only make sense at 2 a.m., and a wild amount of rewriting. It's all chaotic, and it somehow still turns into a book.

Here's the slightly more organized part:

• For plotting, I love Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody and Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes. Think of them as a sort of vague map, so I'm not wandering around my own plot like a lost tourist.
• For revisions and edits, I work through the points in The Artful Edit by Susan Bell. It's how I turn a rough draft into something that looks more like the story I have in mind.

If you want to write a novel, remember that you don't need to copy anyone else's exact system. You just need a system - your system. Sometimes it takes some trial and error to figure out what your system is, and honestly, that part can be fun! 

The pep talk (please read this part twice)

If you write, you're a writer. Not "aspiring." Not "someday." If you're putting words down, you're one of us!

You don't have to write every day. Every writing meme says that you have to write every day. But life has seasons, and some of them involve a baby, a job, a family emergency, or just a brain that's tapped out. Writing in fits and starts still counts. Slow still counts. 

Forget "write what you know." Write what you love. You'll spend months, possibly years, with this story. You might as well spend them with something that makes you excited to work on it each day. Love of the story and the process is what gets you through the middle of the book, when the writing gets messier.

And if your first draft is a mess? Good. That's what first drafts are for. Mine are a disaster. We fix them later.

Quick answers to the questions I get most

What's the first thing I should do after I finish a draft? Take a breath,  reward yourself with a piece of chocolate, and then start revising. For me, that means an overview pass first, fixing big-picture problems and potholes, and then sending the draft to my beta readers. Then I make those changes and send the manuscript to my editor for developmental edits. 

How much does it cost to publish a book? It varies a lot from author to author, so I won't throw out a number. The main expenses are usually a cover designer and an editor. After that, there are optional things like an ISBN, a distributor like Draft2Digital, and marketing. My best advice: research your options, decide what you actually want to do, and set a budget from there.

What if traditional publishing was your goal and it doesn't work out? You've got options. Indie publishing is what I'm doing now, and small publishers that open for proposals are how I got started. I haven't queried any agents yet (I may look into it down the road), and that's a whole different world, so I can't speak to it from experience.

My favorite writing resources

• The Creative Penn podcast. Practical, encouraging, and full of real-world author business advice.
• Becca Syme's books. Her Dear Writer series is honest, a little bit of a reality check, and weirdly comforting. I love having a practical voice to listen to whenever I need it!
• The Writing Gals Facebook groups. A supportive community of writers who actually answer your questions. Many, many questions have already been asked and answered, so it's worth searching through the archives, too.
• Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Romancing the Beat, for plotting, like I mentioned above.
• The Artful Edit, for revising and editing. Even with this resource, it's always a good idea to hire an actual human editor for developmental edits and copy edits. 
• Bethany Atazadeh's Publish Your Novel class on Udemy. A great overview, and a good place to start if you want the big picture. (While double checking everything for this blog, I actually found a page full of helpful resources on Bethany Atazadeh’s website. I haven't dug into it yet, but definitely worth checking!)

Now go write something!