writing a novel — Blog — Rachel Giesel Grimm

Fall brings cozy sweaters and yummy coffee, the perfect combination to cuddle up with words. It also brings NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where writers from all around the world compete with themselves to write 50,000 new words on their novel in 30 short days. It's a writing marathon that requires commitment, energy, and dedication to your story. To successfully prepare for NaNoWriMo, the writing community has also created Preptober. A portmanteau of prepare and October, this month-long retreat gives you the time to plan your story, create your characters, write an outline, and manage your obligations outside of writing so you can focus and succeed during your writing marathon. Learn all about Preptober and get the resources you need to successfully plan and prep your novel!

For a long time I've been in the dark of what actually writing a whole novel looks like. I believed it was straightforward: writing chapter one, then chapter two, all the way to "the end". But in reality, at least for me, the process doesn't really look like that. I'm sharing my process–the good, the bad, the epically messy–to document the novel-writing reality that's true to me. Hopefully, if you're writing a novel and struggling with questions of "Am I doing it right?", sharing my process will give you the confidence and calm that no matter how messy and crazy your draft is, you can get through it. So, here's what this novel has been through so far and what's yet to come! This is Novel Notes Update #1!