Writing a Novel in Six Months

By A.E. Williams

About ten years ago (or maybe longer), I wrote an article about writing a novel in six months. No, this doesn’t mean writing a perfect, well-polished manuscript to send to the printers, but it does mean that you, as the writer, can produce a solid first draft which can then be edited and polished for eventual publication. Do you think you can do it?

Writing a novel can be difficult, of course, but it doesn’t mean you need to or should expend years on that first draft. Write your draft, perfect it later. That’s the message of today’s post. But also, writers are notorious for coming up with their own excuses of why their book is still “in the works,” so I’m going to get tough about those excuses.

Know Your Genre Word Count

The first point that most writers should look at is the actual word count of their book. So, knowing genre-specific word counts can really come in handy. Do your research on about how long (word count) a typical book in your genre is and aim for that many words to write. Frankly, you should write 5,000–10,000 more words than that number as you’ll end up cutting words during the editing process. A typical word count for an adult novel is around 80,000 words, so be in that ballpark. Also note that some publishing houses have a minimum word count for submission. So if you have a specific publisher in mind, cater the length to that publisher. Don’t use more, or less, words than you need to tell your full story. Have a general idea of how long your book…