Who should write a novel?

Series 1 - Beginning Writing

To begin my adventure into writing my first novel I will explore why beginning to write your own novel poses such a challenge and how I navigated my way through the abyss of "everybody wants to be a writer" and "only very few (almost microscopic) will ever achieve any success." This is a question that has been one of my most fundamental challenges throughout my life. In the end I realised that regardless of what happens I will write because that is what I love to do. 

I have always thought that writing a novel was something that only the privileged or the really talented could do, and only because they had began writing stories throughout their childhood or teenage years. Writers that I particularly admire seem to fulfil this stereotype, such as George Orwell, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Roald Dahl, George R. R. Martin, Mario Puzo and J. K. Rowling, to name just a few. They all wrote for many years, usually beginning in their adolescent years and only becoming successful after at least a decade or two.

I'm sure you have heard of these stories as there is definitely no shortage of the narrative. However, that is just it. It is a narrative that had been popularised in our schooling, where we would learn about great authors, almost like child prodigies, who would go on to become successful writers only after many, many years of writing. What these narratives failed to illustrate was how many authors achieved success later on in their lives and that the key to writing successfully for all authors is the fact that they loved or love what they do. I learnt that it is only when you love the craft of writing that you will persevere with the art.

It was a relief to begin reading and listening to Steven Pressfield, author of the War of Art, who said, "[u]nlike many writers that [we] hear about, [he] did not know he was going to be a writer until well into his later years." He had always loved literature but he did not recognise it as his calling. I fall into this latter camp. After finishing schooling I entered the working world and became a young mother. My world would be my sons for many years, where I would, however, read prolifically, a combination of fiction and non-fiction. What I did notice throughout this time was how much I was drawn to the ideas in novels, and how much I wanted to express the ideas, similar and different, in my own writing.

And now when someone, and there will be many, tells me that "everybody wants to be a writer" and that it is 'incredibly difficult" to publish a novel my response will be, "I write because I have something to say and maybe their are others who want to hear it. If not, at least I am enjoying what I do." 

In this blog my attempt will be to illustrate this journey, and share with you how I learn to write my first novel. This will entail providing you with my ideas on plot, characterisation, and mostly importantly, themes. My learning journey will be structured in a "series" format for the purpose of following me on this journey and for organising the steps of the novel writing process (i.e. Series 1.0, 1.1 ... ). This technique will also separate entries that refer to other areas or ideas that I write about.