9 Months In: My Novel Writing Reality Check
Or how I discovered why most people don’t finish their first novel
Nine months ago, I confidently told myself I’d finish the first draft of my first novel by the end of 2025. I had spreadsheets, and writing schedules.
Today, I’m staring at 20,000 words and the sobering realization that my timeline was completely unrealistic.
If you’re a busy professional who’s been wrestling with your first novel. Watching your work target slip away and getting crushed by the weight of real life, you’re not alone. The gap between our novel-writing fantasies and reality is wider than we imagine. But here’s what I’ve learned: those “failed” timelines aren’t actually failures. They’re part of the messy, non-linear process of becoming a novelist.
In this post, I’ll share the hard-won lessons from my first nine months of novel writing, including why traditional goal-setting backfires, the phases of book creation that no one talks about, and how to build a sustainable writing practice when you’re already juggling a demanding career. By the end, you’ll understand why your struggles aren’t signs of failure.
New York Times bestselling author Neil Schusterman says there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Writing is getting stuck. It’s how we solve these creative problems which defines our writing.
Why traditional goal-setting fails for novels.
I recently came across “The Art of Slow Writing” by Louise DeSalvo. She breaks down writing a book into 6 phases.
First, you imagine the work, think about it, and take notes about it, perhaps long before you actually begin writing. Second, once you start, you work provisionally, knowing you’ll have many opportunities to get it right. Third, you work in stages, writing, revising, letting yourself learn what your subject is really about as you work. Fourth, you figure out order, structure, and image patterns late in the process, though you may have some ideas from the start. You revise accordingly. Fifth, you fine-tune the work, tightening where necessary, adding information your reader needs when necessary. You go through the work word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph. Sixth, you don’t show your work until late in the process. And then you revise again, based upon feedback.
The duration of phases 1 and 2 are extremely variable, lasting years, or even decades. Brandon Sanderson said the idea of a non-liquid sea, which appears in Tress of the Emerald Sea, came to him 20 years before he would write the novel.
Let’s look at the rough timeline of another of his books, A Way of Kings, the first book in the Stormlight Archives series.
He first started writing the story in the 1990s
Characters, scenes, and specifically Bridge Four, appeared in his Masters thesis in 2000
He finished the first draft in 2003 (The Way of Kings Prime eBook)
After receiving a rejection from Tor, he switched focus to write the Mistborn Trilogy
He would finally publish the book in 2010
By my estimates, he spent at least 10 years in phases 1 and 2 alone.
We all know writing a book takes a long time. Where I fell into a trap is that it feels good to create a plan. You can tell yourself “I’ll write 2,000 words a day.” Maybe you’ll use a tool like Pacemaker to make a writing schedule. Suddenly, writing a 100k word novel seems easy. All I have to do is stick to my plan and I’ll finish in no time.
Oliver Burkman in his book “Meditations for Mortals” uses the analogy of a kayak vs a superyacht. When we make plans for the future, we pretend our life is like a superyacht. We plot a course on our GPS, deciding where we want to go (our goal), then we sit back in a comfy leather chair, sipping cocktails, smoothly sailing to our destination. When in reality life is like kayaking on a raging river, paddling just to stay upright. Being able to control our time is just an illusion.
When I tell myself to write 2,000 words a day, that’s a yacht mindset. Then when writing is hard, or I’m unable to make time, I feel upset, and the negative feelings make me even more unlikely to write. If we can accept that we will never have enough time to do the things we want to do. Our books will never be as good as we want them to be. If we can accept we’ve already failed, then maybe we could make something meaningful out of what’s left.
I gave myself 6 months to do the outline and 6 months to write the first draft. The decision to divide the goal into half years was to mirror the way the company I work for does planning. For a 100k fantasy novel, it worked out to around 500 words a day. This may seem realistic. But the real challenge is showing up every day. Every missed day leads to more missed days. Taking a week off can lead to a deficit of 3,500 words, it adds up quickly.
What actually works.
First off, 6 months was way too long of a time to work on an outline. Mainly because I had no idea what I was doing. For an outline to be useful, you need to know how to use it to save you time and energy when writing the actual scenes. Because I had no experience writing scenes, it ended up being mostly procrastination. I spent so much time and energy agonizing over decisions which didn’t matter or ended up getting cut completely.
Don’t put off decisions. What’s important isn’t the decision itself, rather it’s what you do after you decide. In a novel, the elements are supposed to weave together to create a sum greater than its part. How will you build on top of what you already have? When working on plotting, go hunting for decisions. Make them quickly, knowing you’ll have opportunities to go back and fix them later.
The #1 habit for novel writing is to get into a dailyish routine of writing prose. By dailyish, I mean not every day, maybe 4-5 times a week. Staying inside of the project, touching it every day. Because as soon as you step out, the amount of energy needed to get back into it goes up. Be willing to write today as a one-off. Even if it’s not part of a writing system, outline, or detailed plan.
I didn’t seriously start writing prose until 3 months ago. My thinking was a more developed outline would lead to more efficient writing. Now I know I was suffering from worldbuilding disease. A condition I see among participants in online writing communities like NanoWriMo and r/worldbuilding. Worldbuilding serves the plot and character. To excessively worldbuilding in isolation is basically daydreaming. It’s easy enough to make you feel good, which can trick you into thinking you’re writing a novel.
Now, I understand the biggest challenge is being consistent with coming back and writing prose. My struggle primarily is with overcoming doubt. Our brains are efficient at convincing us to do something easier and instantly gratifying. Why work hard on something that’s going nowhere? It’s not like I’ll ever be good at this, anyway? I’m going to do a post on this topic, eventually.
My new approach.
I remember back when I started this project thinking that I could continue my regular cadence of blogging. It’ll be easy, I thought. I’ve been blogging for a while, it’s part of my routine. Well, let me tell you, as soon as I started seriously focusing on the novel it became challenging to maintain the blog. Which is why I’ve decided. The blog is now about writing my novel.
Combining these projects will reduce my mental capacity of maintaining this blog. I like to think about ways of improving this blog. How to make the content more useful and resonant with the type of readers I’d like to reach. How to distribute it in a way to create more visibility. Well, forget all of that. My current vision is a blog like the early days. No promises of big results, or life hacks, or free templates. Just me trying to figure things out and sharing what I’ve learned.
In the Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger she writes.
They say the oldest trick in nonfiction is threefold:
Tell them what you’re doing.
Do it.
Tell them what you did.
So here’s my promise, I’ll tell you how I wrote my first novel and what I learned. That’s it.
There’s a lot to learn in Phase 1. Just writing scenes from my outline gives me ideas and teaches me about my characters and plot. Yes, there are enormous gaps between scenes, everything will need to be revised. What’s important is that the more I write, the more I learn about what I want this novel to be.
If you try to incorporate everything you learn into your current draft, it’s paralyzing. When I discover a new thread I’d like to include, I make a note, and keep going. I’ll come back to that later on the next draft.
Now, my plan is to take everything I learned and go back and write Act 1. I want to build a solid base for the rest of the novel to unfold. I want to practice my phase 3 writing, writing and revising one section to develop that voiciness which can only emerge from revision.
I’m also trying something new with external accountability and feedback. I’ve done many writing classes, both didactic, and workshop format. After reading so many writing on writing books, the didactic lessons feel too familiar. Also, reading other people’s work takes me out of the flow of being inside of my work. Don’t get me wrong, you can learn plenty from reading other people’s work. It’s just I learn more by focusing on my own projects.
So I’ve tried out using a book coach using Reedsy. A book coach is a professional with an editorial book who can help you develop a book while you’re still writing. Opposed to a developmental editor, who typically only works with authors who already have a manuscript.
The book coach I found was not as expensive as I thought it would be. I’ll be sending them my book proposal, detailed outline, and first 10k words in November. In my mind, I’m putting together a packet to pitch my book to him.
In memoirs I’ve read of writers, writers develop long-lasting relationships with editors from publishing houses. The editor takes them on as a new writer and helps develop their voice over decades. It’s always appealed to me entering a sort of apprenticeship, getting feedback from an experienced professional. Someone who can see my improvement and learn what I’m trying to do over a time span longer than a semester. So I’m trying it out. Let’s see how it goes!