Drafting a Novel in 15 Minutes a Day

Written by guest blogger Peter Mach II.

Roger Zelazny, author of the Amber series, launched his career a day at a time while working fulltime at the Social Security Administration. When I heard him speak, I was still in college, still thinking that I needed big blocks of time to write anything important. But I learned that focus, commitment, and discipline matter more than two weeks in the mountains communing with my Muse. 

In fact, I make a point of demonstrating this to my students. My classes typically begin with the students taking 15 timed minutes to write about themselves and why they are taking the class. They typically get 300 words (high 690, low 180 so far). This is without using any of my tips, and I point out that even 200 words a day adds up to 73,000 words a year.

How do they do it? All of them have set aside time, know who they are, understand the context (a class) and have some sense of the audience. In other words, they have committed to the work, know what they want to say, and how they should say it. These are the essential keys to productive writing. Want more detail? Try this:

• Know your stuff – A writer needs to know story structure, grammar, point of view, and dozens of other elements of clear, engaging writing. This doesn’t just happen. It usually requires study and practice. Zelazny honed his craft by writing short stories. After scores of failures, he sold one, analyzed why that one sold and rewrote the more promising stories. Then he moved on to novels.
• Commit – Like my students, you need to set aside the 15 minutes every day, and you need to protect that time from everything else in your life. Write down why you must write, and keep the list in front of you.
• Prepare – Know what you are going to write before you begin your 15 minutes. I recommend choosing the project and thinking about the scene the day before.
• Get away from distractions – Close doors. Turn off email. Abandon spouses and children. Asimov papered over his million-dollar view of Central Park so he could keep his attention on his work.
• Kill your internal editor – You’ll need that fractious fellow later, but not in the drafting stage.
• Go! – Don’t sit and think. Write immediately. This is a sprint! It may help to have a half sentence or an incomplete scene left over from the day before.
• Celebrate – Count your words. Add up the total. Your novel is getting done. This is a lot more fun than wishing you could get some writing done, isn’t it?

Of course, drafting a novel is not the same as completing a novel. Zelazny dedicated his weekends to rewriting, which is where promising work becomes something glorious. But, as Nora Roberts said, you can’t edit a blank page. So give yourself the gift of fifteen minutes a day and fulfill your dreams of being a novelist.

Peter Mach II is a productive writer of speeches, articles, scripts, short stories, radio, and books. Teacher, author of How to Write Fast. Website http://howtowritefast.webs.com/ Twitter @howtowritefast Email howtowritefast@gmail.com

Feistres Crew Cabins

I read a great blog post today about how drawing maps of your fictional land can help develop story lines. I found this out when I was writing the opening scene of Chapter 1 of the first book (yes, I have gotten that far). I needed to know where everyone's cabins were, so I mapped it out. Since I removed some characters from my story, I have more room to add them later as cameo guests if I choose to use them. Anyway, I thought you would like to see what I have so far. It is a bit square for a ship of any kind, but it is a work in progress. Every time I try to see the outside of the ship in my head, all I can picture is a giant metallic chicken-shaped monstrosity. Stop laughing. I am serious, although I really wish I was not. Since that is definitely not an ideal spaceship shape, I'll wait until I can see it more clearly. If it were going to be a silly sci-fi book like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a chicken-shaped spaceship would be perfect. That's not really the vision I have for Feistres. Until I determine the final hull shape, I'll work with a square. Here is my first attempt at the cabins.

As you can see, it needed some work. I changed things around until they were more accommodating, but it was still not complete and was jumbled. Below is the cleaned-up version.

Here's the "final" with all names (except for Captain Lafayette Rhys), and everyone assigned a room. This is final only in that it gives me something to work with and is not on the drawing paper I got for the purpose of mapping everything out. The small squares are the shared bathrooms. Everyone shares except the Captain and the married couple. The cabins are pretty spacious without the need for the ship to be chicken-shaped. :)

Killing Off Characters Before They Ever Were

Recently I had to remove people from my plane of existence. Well, not my plane exactly, but one I am currently creating, and their universe is rather near and dear to my heart. I like them well enough to endure them, but not well enough to make them the stars of their own novellas, short stories, or (let's be honest) their own character descriptions.

I started with a list of possible starship crew positions and tried to cut it down to the bare minimum. I had about twenty positions. I combined a few, and still had  fifteen crew members. I decided this was workable enough, although I had read warnings that a ship requiring that many crew members would be pretty large, but I justified it as necessary for shift changes to work. Then I tried writing character descriptions.  Yikes.

I had a few ideas about several different characters, and they were relatively easy descriptions to write. Then it got harder...much harder. Some had huge holes in their stories. I added a character because the concept  was more interesting than any of my existing characters. At this point, I took some time and watched a few episodes of one of my favorite "creative compost" sources. I definitely had way too many characters. I looked at my character list and cut out everyone who did not have a good story line, moved some jobs around, and combined story lines that would work together.

Now I have 10 characters. It's still too many, but it means everyone gets a bigger cabin.

**On Wednesday, August 15th, blogger Peter Andrews of "How To Write Fast" fame will be here as a guest blogger!**

Busy As A Bee

They are there, I promise! (Photo is mine.)

On my way to work yesterday morning, I arrived at a stoplight just after it turned red. Sighing morosely, I leaned my head against the driver side window and stared in great despair at the median next to me. It took a few seconds for my brain to process the movement, but once I noticed it, I instantly perked up. There are blue flowers growing in the median, and this morning they had been discovered by a hive of honeybees.


I was raised with an acute appreciation for honey bees. My dad used them as pollinators for crops when I was in high school and college, and I remember getting swarmed when I got too close to a hive on summer break. I stood very still while my poor dad picked honey bees out of my long, curly hair. Neither one of us got stung once. Honey bees are  the only stinging insects that get a kind and gentle escort out of my house. Everything else gets sprayed or smashed. I understand that everything serves a purpose, but not in my house. Anyway, back to my despair.

Photo Courtesy of Jari Leivo

I was so morose and despairing because I was facing deadlines that I knew I could not meet. Both my day job and Scribe's Helper have been moving at a frenetic pace lately, and due to several factors, I require a certain amount of sleep and mental rest in order to function more like a human and less like a zombie. I have been a bit frustrated because, while I am busy, I do not feel necessarily fulfilled. Then I looked at those bees, happily zipping and zooming from blossom to blossom, stuffing their little cargo-pant-like legs with pollen to take back to their hive, and suddenly I was immensely grateful. I am admittedly an information junkie, and while I do not focus much attention on breadmakers, plastic surgeons, or termites in Austrialia (although the last topic is close enough to my actual interests to be entertaining) I am also getting paid to read about online marketing strategies, software ideas and developing a customer base.

Every day those little bees wake up, faced with another day spent flying all over the countryside, braving traffic to find medians of flowers so they can begin their leg-stuffing all over again. They do their zig-zag dances, stretch their wings, and fly - directly to the best sources of pollen. Their pace is frenetic, their job a means of survival, but they get to see some really pretty flowers along the way. Although my current pace is crazy fast, it will not always be this way, but while it is, I will look for things to enjoy. Hopefully today I will be close enough to the median to visit with the bees again.