Jeremiah Tolbert

Besides over-​​sleeping enough to be deeply annoyed with myself, I’ve been read­ing a lot and plan­ning a novel.  I was just in a book­store for the first time since I got my iPad in order to buy a copy of Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass.  I’ve read it once before, as a library check­out, but I’d for­got­ten most of what I learned. Buying the book, along with a lot of ques­tions I’ve been ask­ing on Twitter, all serve to the same goal of find­ing a crutch to help me get through the process.

I’ve started and aban­doned novel projects a cou­ple of times.  The longest thing I ever wrote was in Africa, before I even started “writ­ing” proper, and I think it came in around 40,000 words or so. I was just writ­ing to kill time at that point, and when I had very lit­tle else to do, it wasn’t too hard to man­age.  Also, I didn’t know any­thing, wasn’t aware that I didn’t know any­thing, so it was easy to do.  No pressure.

I’ve been think­ing a lot about my long term future lately.  I’m start­ing to think that there’s a chance I might live past my 40s, and I’m not con­fi­dent that I can still be per­son­ally build­ing web­sites at 50.  It’s a young man’s game, and while I hope Clockpunk Studios to be alive and well still at that point, I just know I can’t be doing this.  So I’m try­ing to plan for the future.

I’ve done a lot of soul search­ing lately and I think I would very much like to make a con­sid­er­able por­tion of my liv­ing writ­ing.  And the only way that’s going to have even a chance of hap­pen­ing is by writ­ing nov­els.  So I’m set­ting aside short sto­ries and work­ing to fig­ure out my process for novels.

Back to for­mu­las.  I know I can write. I’m com­fort­able with my base­line skill at this point.  I’ve sold enough short sto­ries to con­vince myself, yes, I know how to write at least a lit­tle.  I’m just not sure I can write any­thing so sus­tained.  So I’m look­ing for struc­tures that can help me break down a novel into sizes and bits I can under­stand, with­out turn­ing it into a series of loosely con­nected short stories.

So I’ve been col­lect­ing for­mu­las, advice, and what not, all while I fill up a word file with ideas, imagery, bits and pieces that I want to go into this first novel.  I’m try­ing not to put any pres­sure on myself.  I want the whole process to be fun, and I’m excited about the idea at the moment.

So far, I’ve collected:

• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• Jim Butcher’s Livejournal
• How to Write a Book in Three Days

I need rules to fol­low, a struc­tural guide.  At the very least so I can know what rules there are to break.  It’s a whole new ball game.  One that takes a ter­ri­fy­ingly long time to play.  But here I go anyway.

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Tags: formula, My Writing, novels