Creative Stamina:

How I tackle my 200k novels.

Introduction:

One of the questions I get asked all the time is about how I keep on track with such enormous projects. It’s true, I write monster fantasy romance novels at 160-200k. My trilogies top 500k words, AND I’m constantly coming up against roadblocks with chronic pain and fatigue. So, I guess despite the fact it doesn’t feel like it every time I start a new book, I kind of actually know what I’m doing!

I have 9 full length novels under my belt, a novella, and 5 short stories at this point, so I’ll get to it and pass on some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned to keep going, even when the project you’re working on seems never-ending or insurmountable.

Let’s do this!

Self-care for the creative soul:

First things first, if you’re used to writing 60k or even 100k novels, you must understand that when working on a project almost double or even triple the length, you’re dealing with an entirely different animal. I know a lot of authors who will spend weeks not writing and then blast out 40k in a few days of frenzied typing, but with a novel this kind of length, consistency is key. What that means for you is that it’s never been more important to look after your most important writing tool. YOU. Break up the project into do-able daily amounts for you (not the author you follow on twitter or what some article on Pinterest suggests), because the goal with this kind of work isn’t to finish quick, it’s to finish-period.

These kinds of novels intimidate the crap out of a lot of writers, and you’ll find a lot of writers doing huge amounts of work and then becoming blocked for even years at a time. This is because the author who works in bursts often can’t sustain these bursts for long enough to reach such a high target word count. Trust me, I have learned this from personal experience. I wrote a 200k novel in 4 months, and I was creatively burned out for a year afterwards even though I finished it and was stressed to sickness during the process of getting everything done. My brain just couldn’t keep up with the rate of work, and the amount of energy creating so much content in such a short time required. I know there are incredible people out there who can pop off 200k in a month, and that’s amazing for them, but if you’ve never worked on a project this long, slow and steady is definitely the way to go.

So, in short, drink lots of water, get plenty of sleep, and make sure you’re taking care of yourself as a priority during this marathon writing experience!

Plotting and keeping it simple:

I know what you’re thinking if you’re a ‘Pantzer’… that plotting doesn’t work for you. But I’m here to tell you that with a project this large, you don’t need a super detailed plot (though this for me personally is crucial), but you should at least have a basic outline. This is because with a 200k novel it’s extremely easy to get off track- especially if you have a lot of characters and a large setting. It’s easy when you have such a high wordcount allotted for a project to stray from the main storyline and fall down the rabbit hole of other characters and other possible scenarios. However, this is what causes readers to put down your book halfway through. You need to keep your protagonist’s desires and their goal front and centre throughout the writing process of the first draft. Even if you go back and add in more storylines for lesser characters later, you want to ensure that the incredibly long backbone of your enormous novel is as stable as possible and will keep people turning pages as well as ensuring it’s the star of the show, and not reduced to a side act.

I like to keep my protagonist’s goal/what they want on a revision card stuck to my desk in eyesight (this is a great tip for any writing project- even short stories!). If I start to dwindle, it reminds me to focus on the essential during what can often seem like an ocean of words and potential content. If you have multiple POVs, as I do, (Each of my Queens of Fantasy series has 4 protagonists) then try having a card for each character and placing it in eyesight when you’re writing from their point of view.

Don’t stare directly into the sun:

One of the biggest problems I hear from writers working on super long books is the same problem I hear from the first-time author who wants to write a 17-book series right off the bat. They get an idea, and it’s INCREDIBLE in their head, so they sit down to write and the sheer length of the series they want to eventually write stops them from ever even starting book one.

Creative paralysis is something I’m awfully familiar with, having been working on a Saga that spans over 1.5 million words over the past 5 years. Often, I’ll find myself putting off writing, or looking at the sheer amount of work I have left to do and it leaves me unable to put my words down at all. Not only that, but I also have this tendency to want to write my series perfect first time. For me that means getting every single storyline from all 10 novels placed and perfected without any editing and worrying about screwing up a book I haven’t even written yet.

Crazy right?

So, my advice for this is ‘don’t stare into the sun’. Don’t look directly at the whole project or you’ll blind yourself with the sheer enormity of it. Prepare for the future, of course, but also have laser focus on the scene in front of you. It’s not about the book you’ll write five books from now, it’s about the next sentence you’ll put down on the page today. It’s important to be able to separate the macrocosm of your series from the microcosm of the book or chapter you’re currently working on. After all, writing 200k sounds like an impossible task. Writing 2,000 words 100 times however sounds a lot more doable. Not only that, but you can edit words put down to accommodate plot points you plan on weaving in later, you can’t do that without any words to play with in the first place.

Keep your eye on today and keep moving forward in small steps, no matter if that’s 2000 words or 20. Even if it feels like you’re not making any progress with tiny word counts daily, it’s better than sitting there overwhelmed and writing nothing at all.

The Darkest Part of The Forest:

This final point is perhaps the most important, and the most difficult to get through when writing a huge novel. Every author, I don’t care who you are, goes through this thing we call The Darkest Part of The Forest and it usually occurs during the middle of your novel, when you’ve been working on it for what feels like forever, kind of can’t remember what you wrote in the first half of the story, and your motivation is at an all time low. You can see the results of leaving this unchecked in books with what we call ‘a saggy middle’ and of course it’s way more likely to affect you negatively if you’re working on a longer manuscript. I could say that plotting stops this, but while I think it alleviates some of the feeling of being completely lost, I plan the crap out of my books and I still end up experiencing this with every single book I write.

It’s a question of faith, in my humble opinion, faith that you’ll find your way out of the forest, faith that the situation of feeling lost is temporary, and having the creative strength and courage to keep going even when you feel like you’ll never feel positive about what you’re working on again. What you should remember is that this is totally normal. It’s something that happens to everyone who is working on something creative their passionate about, and its most definitely when imposter syndrome and self-doubt get their claws in.

My advice for this, though honestly every single time I write a book I deal with it differently, is to go back to basics. A lot of people say re-reading your book before it’s finished is a no-no, but I find it helps me clarify where I’m heading, as well as allowing me to rediscover threads that I’ve still got to tie up by the end. If you don’t want to re-read, go, and try to outline your novel from memory, or make a brainstorm of all the important factors that have brought your novel to the point it is currently sitting at. This refresher technique isn’t fool proof, but it’s gotten me out of a lot of binds in the past.

If this doesn’t work, I’ve gotten inspiration on how to continue by walking, lying in a dark room listening to the playlist I listen to while I write, or trying my hand at writing something else for a while. These things could work for you too, so feel free to give them a try.

Conclusion:

To conclude, writing a novel of immense length can be extremely draining, frustrating, and exhausting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. I love getting my paperback proofs in the post and seeing the incredible number of pages I’ve managed to put down, and the depth of story and character development I’ve been able to achieve. My best advice is right here in this article, but to summarise-

· Take care of yourself!

· Stay focused on your main storyline!

· Don’t get overwhelmed by the bigger picture, stay present and concentrate on your next step!

· Know that a block halfway through is totally normal.

· Keep writing- it’s a marathon not a sprint.