Ava Jae has an interesting post on her blog Writability this morning about first novels. The question she was answering is, how do you pick the story to write for your fist novel when 95% of first novels never see the light of day? We refer to these as trunk novels (because they stay in the trunk).
Her answer is right on the money, you have to commit to whatever story you choose. We can’t possibly commit the time and energy it takes to write a novel to real completion without the belief that we are going to put it out there for sale or distribution (if that was our original goal, not everyone writes to be published). By complete I mean first draft finished and then several passes to revise and refine; this just to send it to a publisher or agent. If you are self-publishing you need to add another step. Send it to a real editor for that professional polish.
Novelists don’t do practice novels. That is not to say we don’t do writing exercises. Writers write for practice and it can be in the form of writing challenges or blogs or short stories. But even short stories require work. Challenges are easy and don’t take up a lot of time. Novels are a completely different animal altogether. They are layered with multiple plots and many characters, that done correctly, have more than two dimensions. The novel should have theme and soul and requires foreshadowing and planning. The planning can happen after the draft is done actually and may require you to move things around as the plot elements are often very malleable, but it requires time and energy.
