Too Much of a Good Thing

It's natural for us to get excited about something new. Like a new writing project. Currently, I'm really excited about this novel idea that's turning out a lot better than I thought it would. I'm constantly thinking about what's happening, who are these people I've created, and wondering if everything will turn out okay, and all I want to do is write. If I let myself, I could be doing 5000+ words a day, but so far I've been limiting myself to under 1500, or less than a chapter. Why?

It's simple really. I've been through enough failed projects to understand what goes wrong. It's the idea of learning how to do something by completely understanding how not to do it. I've learned a few things about writing a novel by knowing what prevents me from getting to the end, and I've learned a few things from the one (unpublishable) novel I do have. The first is that it has to be on a scale you can manage. There's no sense writing a ten protagonist epic like Stephen King's It was as a first novel. I don't have the experience to handle that amount of story, so I have to make it simpler. Second, it can't be too simple, and for exactly the same reason. I tried a one character focused novel, and I crashed and burned because I don't have the skill and experience to take on such a unique and challenging story. A good first novel has two or three central characters with a few minor characters thrown in, which is what I'm working with.

Third, and where the title of this post comes from, you can't rush a story. Writing 3000 words is roughly the equivalent of writing 10 paperback pages, which could take you anywhere from 10-30 minutes to read depending on speed. It should take longer than that to write those, and if it's not, then you aren't thinking about what you're writing. Simply, you're writing like you would read, and that tends to drop out things. Also, that over-excitement wears off. If you have 20,000 words you wrote one week (which I've done in less before), that's roughly 70 pages. What happens is you've exhausted yourself with the story, and you become sick of it, wanting to do something else. That was a waste of a week. So limit to 1500 words, I usually fall under that, 2000 max. Don't get absorbed, but let it work itself out and plan instead of write, you'll thank yourself.