Imagine being a successful full-time author, living the dream life, spending your days writing in a cafe, and that's your job. Okay, I may be missing just a few details here, but you get the idea. Flexible hours as long as you meet the deadlines, publishing stories that live rent-free in your head, and that's enough to make a living for you.
Could not be me. Or you, I'm guessing, if you're reading this.
Let me introduce myself: I'm a rising college senior majoring in Astrophysics in the States, and I recently self-published my debut novel after three years of writing and revising. I'll go into more detail about my experiences with the whole process later, once the sequel is published, but the long story short was that I wrote my last manuscript in seven weeks at 132.5k words. This was after two rewrites of dreadful versions of the story. I did my first round of revisions a year later and had to split the book into a duology, at roughly 80k words for each book, over the span of two weeks. Then I focused on the first book for the next six months or so to publish, and now I'm revising the second book.
For context, I wrote the manuscript of 132.5k words while I was working at an astrophysics research program, where I analyzed simulation results of the core collapse process in massive, rotating stars. It sounds more hardcore than it actually was; there was often a gap between finishing analysis and waiting for the next round of results to come in, and that was where I would squeeze in some time to write. But most of the writing progress was done after work.
Similarly, this summer I'm interning at a particle physics lab, and I've definitely had more time to write because it's the first week, but I've adopted the same routine. As I've mentioned in my Awesome Gang interview, I am very much a binge-writer. This past week has been a fever dream of getting lost in Europe, looking like a total idiot in front of my supervisors, starving in a pitch-black lab removing tungsten from passive detectors, taking fat naps after work, and furiously typing thousands of words until 3am.
Disclaimer: My writing habits are unhealthy. I do not recommend. But I do have some tips on how to persevere for people when they ask me, 'How do you do it?' Because trust me, I lose motivation, I rarely have the time or energy, and I don't know what's going on in my own book most of the time. Yet we all want to make it, right? We want to see a finished draft, as messy and disorganized and full of plot holes as it is. And we want to be able to hold it in our hands someday. Somehow, I did it, despite already living like your average sleep-deprived and broke college student. And that's what this blog is about.
Another disclaimer: I have yet to figure out successful marketing and promotion, so this is just about how to get through the writing part of publishing a book. And take this with a grain of salt, because I do not claim to be a writing god. Maybe my work will never sell outside of my friend groups, but hey, they are all insanely proud of me for writing a whole novel. Your book will probably go much further than mine if you do have marketing figured out, but not without taking the first step of completing your manuscript.
So, here it goes.
Planning Your Story
I know some writers prefer to write as they go, which is very valid, but I personally have the attention span of a goldfish and would never finish a book if I wrote that way. At the very least, I think one should set a tentative beginning and end, especially in the aspects of character development. It can definitely change, but having something to start with is essential to getting the words on your page. Your outline then should fill in the events that go in between, and the more detailed, the faster the writing will go.
My book, for example, has several layers that needed arcs throughout the story. I have characters who show personal developments, mostly in the sense of battling their own, individual mental health issues, and I have relationship developments, which are closely tied to the personal arcs. Since my characters are all part of a criminal organization in a cyberpunk setting, I also planned out the slow destabilization of it that spans over the two books, and same thing for the corrupt government. In the background, we have natural disasters becoming more dangerous and erratic as the climate changes (wow, does that sound familiar), and world politics that affect the government's decisions.
I outlined every chapter of my books and created a table to jot down notes for any developments made in each of those arcs for each chapter, if any. This was easier for me to keep track of any loose threads. However, some plot points definitely changed. If you've seen those memes or reels of authors complaining about their characters growing their own consciousness and deviating from the plot, that was me, too. And that's okay! I had to revise my outline halfway through the first draft because at that point my characters were more fleshed out and needed to go down a different path than I originally imagined. Don't be afraid to change your original plan, because sticking to it might cause discontinuity in your storytelling. If you've ever yelled at a TV show or movie for giving a character an ending that made absolutely no sense, that's what I mean.
Basically, you should have some idea of how the book begins and ends, just so you have something to work towards. The ending can of course change but not until you've written a good chunk of the story and it's becoming glaringly obvious that the plot needs to evolve. And you can always go back to rewrite the beginning. Try not to keep changing your idea of how it starts or ends before you even start, because that can easily lead to an endless cycle of perfectionism/procrastination.
You can outline as little or much as you want, as long as it's clear in your head how everything goes from the beginning to the end. The dots should connect, and everything that happens in the book should contribute to the story, whether that's the plot or the world-building or just silly facts about the characters for some comedic break.
Easier said than done, but try this out and see what happens.
Setting A Reasonable Writing Schedule
Heavy emphasis on reasonable. Meaning healthy, achievable, and balanced. Unlike me. But I do get some points for 'balanced,' because I take weekends off from writing to hangout with my friends. Well, ignoring the fact that I'm currently writing this blog because my roommate is playing League and we're both too lazy to go out today.
Anyway, you should consider how much you are willing and able to write after work or between classes, or over the weekends. And I know we want to hit those word counts, but try to think objectively about how you're generally doing in those possible writing times. Are you tired and about to fall over, or are you able to sit down and stare at the screen for another couple of hours? How long of a break would you need to be in the writing mode, and what would you do during that break to rejuvenate yourself? And would you be taking out time spent with friends and family in a way that would cause problems to your relationships and to your mental/physical health? We may have goals, but we have to remember that we're people first. Even if we force ourselves to write when we're not feeling well or unhappy, the writing quality suffers, so it's not worth it.
Once you've figured that out, allot achievable goals during those writing sessions. It can be anything, as long as you're making progress. When I wrote my manuscript, I planned for a chapter a day, with weekends off, about 3k words each. It ended up being 4k to 5k per chapter, but that was because I was fixated on telling the stories of each chapter everyday, otherwise it would have interrupted my flow. Every writer is different, so learn what's best for you. And depending how much you want to play to the industry, you should note that the average word count for debut novels is 80k to 90k. Of course, I don't know how much this would actually affect sales or chances of getting an agent, but when I was just starting out I used it as a gauge to see if I'm under-developing my story or dragging it on for too long.
(Clearly, the answer was both, now that it's a duology with reasonable length for each book.)
By now you should be able to roughly calculate how long it will take you. For example, I had 36 chapters and an epilogue planned out, and I wanted to write a chapter every weekday, so that meant seven weeks. Miraculously, I stuck to it. I fully thought I was going to quit after two weeks, max. However long your schedule ends up being, know that it is valid. You don't need to grind out an entire novel in two months. (And technically, this was my third draft in three years. I'm not talking about the first draft; that thing should never see the light of day.) I know it's easy to start comparing yourself to successful authors, especially of the same age, but this is your path to walk. And as long as you keep taking every step, you will reach your destination. The writing process is grueling, almost as soul-crushing as quantum physics, and it's not for the faint of heart. But if you've decided you want to do this, you've got your plan in front of you.
Sticking to the Plan
Objectively the hardest part of the process. Okay, fine, subjectively. But I think most of us are creative people by nature who have too many ideas and too much passion, which would be enough to light the fuse, but not to keep the fire going.
For me, it was my unhealthy attachment to my characters. In fact, I thought I was going to drop this story entirely and never become an author because I was getting an astrophysics degree anyway. But the summer after my freshman year of college, my characters popped back into my head and threatened me into writing this book until it's done.
It also helped that all my friends are incredibly supportive and never made me feel like I was doing something stupid, trying to publish a sci-fi novel while in college, when it is actually kind of stupid. The online writing community can go both ways, but I found some incredible people on Instagram that made me feel less alone on my journey. I even found my author-bestie Ava Jaylynn, who published a book similar to mine and has single-handedly carried all the online hype for my debut novel. Writing can be a very lonely process, because it's just you and your imagination and your stubbornly incomplete book. Surround yourself with people who can be there for you when you're disappointed, frustrated, and burnt out, because you're in it for the long haul.
If you find your plan to be too difficult to follow, whether you simply cannot write enough words during the session or do not feel stimulated with how slowly it's going, change it. The plan should be sustainable, and sometimes you can over- or underestimate yourself. I once told myself I was going to revise 6 chapters per day (Absolutely ridiculous. What was I thinking.) and realized I could only reasonably do 3, so I immediately scribbled out all my notes in my planner and wrote a new plan. And I had no problems sticking to the new plan.
And if your plan works, brace yourself and Just Do It. I know, once again, easier said than done. There were so many times where I would rather go to bed than stick to my goals, even this week. But the plan is reasonable given my habits, so I have to keep going, no matter how tired I am or how much I hate my own writing or how poorly I think the book will sell in the market. Sometimes I blast those boxing coach motivational soundtracks in my headphones; sometimes I mumble self-affirming mantras to myself. Sometimes I get up and do push-ups until I collapse; sometimes I switch back to my physics research and realize I'm even more incompetent in that area. The hardest part, in my opinion, is keeping yourself accountable.
You can read through as many writing advice pages as you want, but in the end, you are what determines whether your book will be done or not. So scream into a pillow if you need, just keep visualizing the day you finally finish, and you can look back and be proud of yourself.
Main Takeaways
Plan out your story to make the writing process go faster. Set a plan that takes into account your mental and physical health, and not anything more than what you can handle. Change the plan if you realize it's not going to work out, and stick to a working plan, whichever one that may be. Find your support system and keep going even when you lose all motivation. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but if you can stay true to why you started, I believe you can make it. Whether you're planning to self-publish or query agents, trust that your story will reach readers and matter to someone.
And if you start experiencing imposter syndrome, try to focus on the story itself and the pieces of you that you've put in it. Let the background noises of publishing and marketing and editing fade away, and keep writing the story that you want to write. We write, despite having jobs or college courses, because we have a story we want to tell. There are always going to be haters, and no one is going to love every story they read. So just write, because you're bringing something new to the world, something that you've decided to create because of what you've experienced or seen.
Hope this was somewhat helpful, and I wish you the best of luck to finishing your manuscript!
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