Camp Pep: Building the Framework for your Novel

Still struggling to start your novel for Camp NaNoWriMo? Our incredible participants have words of wisdom to share with their fellow writers. Today,  participant John Morey encourages you to build on your novel’s framework:

“I’m afraid I’ll mess up,” an author friend of mine said. “Every time I write, I keep deleting it and starting over.”

Sound familiar? Does this happen to you? Well, don’t worry. You’re in good company. And the good news is, there’s a solution. We all run into difficult projects that terrify us, but we make the conscious decision to do them anyway. Writing is exactly the same.

When you build a house, do you meticulously build each wall one at a time, complete it, and then move on to the next? Or do you build the framework first before filling it in? Your first draft of a novel is just that: the framework. Maybe you nail your frame so awesomely that it’s pretty much done, or maybe it’s a rickety skeleton held together by duct tape and prayer. If you really, really feel that you just wrote some garbage, you could delete it and start again, but I would advise you to keep going, at least until you’ve set some stuff up afterward. Revision is much easier when the whole draft is in place—it’s the difference between demolishing an entire building and replacing a single wall.

And yes, you will have slow days. I have ‘em, too. You will have doubt. So do I! You will write trash. Everybody does! But the thing is, when you train yourself to actually do your job, when you take control of your muse, you will produce better and better work. You will build that house. You’ll renovate it. As big and scary as it is, which is scarier? Botching a draft and having to revise it? Or, never becoming a writer in the first place?

Writing is hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. And hey, you can do this. Trust me. Just the fact that you are reading this means that you can do it. No matter how difficult, the challenge isn’t more than you can handle. Learning this is what took me from never finishing a draft to multiple NaNo victories, and I know it will pay off for you, too.

John Morey is a former professional editor who got his noveling start thanks to NaNoWriMo in 2013. He is the author of the upcoming Vintage Soul series.  He was raised on a steady diet of monsters, moved around the country like a human ping-pong ball, and currently lives in the Bay Area, where he juggles writing and serving his feline overlady. You can also find him on Twitter, or Nerditis, where he writes “Life In Plastic” twice-weekly.

Top photo by Flickr user Bill Dickinson.