How to write a novel
When you think about it, the whole thing is about pushing buttons — with feeling. Pushing a lot of buttons. With, um, a lot of feeling. Pushing and pushing and pushing buttons and somehow it results in words marching across a screen, words and paragraphs and pages and chapters, and after a whole bunch of buttons pressed (like, a whole bunch), miraculously, somehow, you get a novel out of it. Quite an astonishing thing, really.
The idea for my own novel, Child of Darkness, Child of Light (current working title) occurred to me many, many years ago, when I was in high school. Originally, the story followed a squad of Italian ex-soldiers who had survived war followed by imprisonment by the Nazis and then, encountering a small girl after the war, decide to help her get to Israel — with many struggles and adventures along the trail.
It was an odd time of my life then. Still in my teens, I went through a phase of dreaming up ideas and writing them down. Tons of ideas, man. Tons. I did lots of actual writing too, including a large sci-fi epic (starring comically exaggerated versions of all my friends) that was actually a novel in development, though I, being young and inexperienced, didn’t realize this. Almost all my work of those days was lost in a basement flood long ago, something that still upsets me. But some of the ideas stuck with me though the 30-odd years since they first entered my mind.
Strangely enough, though I’ve had many useful windows in my life where writing a novel made good sense, I didn’t actually sit down to make this thing until I was a stay at home dad with two tiny kids (neither even in school yet when I began writing). Well, sense or no sense, the time for this book’s arrival had arrived.
But good Lord it was a lot of work. I mean writing a novel is hard, sure, but writing it under those circumstances was extra hard.
Here was my usual schedule:
6:30–7:00am: Wake with the kids.
7:00–8:30am: Get the kids dressed, fed, teeth nice and brushed, son’s lunch made, knapsack packed, etcetera, then out the door.
8:30–9:00am: Son dropped off at school, parents and teachers briefly chatted with. Now alone with daughter.
9:00–10:30am: Run errands with daughter (currently aged three), do something outdoors with her, weather permitting. Chat with her nonstop, though some days it’s just a single verbal stream of consciousness from her.
10:30–11:00am: Hang out with daughter at home, have a snack or two, then put her down for her nap.
11:00am-3:00pm: Naptime. Or should I say “naptime” because she rarely sleeps this entire time. Very quietly do chores, and take a little personal time (check email, have lunch, etc.). And no, I don’t write during this time. I can never write when I’m on the clock. Can’t concentrate.
3:00–3:30pm: Wake up daughter, ensure she’s dressed and bundled up if it’s cold, then go to son’s school to pick him up.
3:45–5:00pm: Weather permitting, take kids to playground or on a local nature walk to romp and fart around. If the conditions are right (not too cold to induce whining) we’ll go tobogganing on the little hill behind my son’s school. In poor weather (i.e. November till April) mostly just go home, there to rest, have a snack, and play.
5:00–6:30pm: Tidy kitchen, make dinner, then wife comes home. Eat a meal together (kids get most of the attention, which is fine (seriously!)). If traffic is bad she can come home considerably later.
7:15pm: Bathe the kids if it’s a bath night (usually done by the wife to bond), then after a flurry of subsequent bathroom activity they’re hopefully in bed by 7:45 or so.
8:00pm: Kids are finally down. Make tea for myself and my wife, who will lie in bed reading awhile before going to bed herself (she gets up early).
9:30pm: Assuming there’s nothing on TV (big fan of Better Call Saul and Vikings … well, okay, huge fan, tremendous fan, basically live for these shows and feel lost and aimless when fresh new episodes refuse to appear on the schedule, need those shows, hell yes, need them, need them bad), will turn off the boob tube and fire up the laptop to work. By the way, my wife looks rather like Lagertha, only taller. And way more gentle. Thank God.
11:00pm: After farting around online, finally, usually, start writing. I keep a spreadsheet to track my progress and to-do lists, because I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to keep it all in my head in the daytime.
1:00am: Close the laptop and quit for the night.
1:00am: Suddenly remember chores I forgot to do earlier, then quickly (and quietly) do them (i.e. folding laundry, preparing wife’s boxed lunch for the next day, loading and starting dishwasher).
1:30am: Go to bed.
1:30am-6:30am: Try to sleep. Try to sleep.
6:30am-7:00am: Get up with the kids and do it all again.
My progress with this schedule was, unsurprisingly, pretty slow. But somehow, over the course of just under two years, it did get done. I’d often despair that it just wasn’t going to happen — it was too big, too exhausting, too impossible.
But happen it did. Frankly I’m still in shock. But pretty proud of myself, just for the work ethic alone!
