This Year You Write Your Novel
Categories: Staff Picks , Nonfiction
The other day I saw a commercial where a family was in search of the father’s New Year’s resolution list. The fifth goal on the list was write a novel. I snickered. Who doesn’t think they have at least one good book in them?
Writer Walter Mosley thinks you do, too, and in his book, This Year You Write Your Novel, he gives you the tools and the motivation to get started.
A slender book with easy to follow instructions, Mosley helps the beginning writer muddle through one year of constant writing, then re-writing. He encourages budding authors to write a thousand words a day without fail, finishing the first draft in three months then rewriting for the next nine months. He doesn’t promise the “Great American Novel” but hopes that in honing the craft every writer can accomplish their end goal: a completed book.
For more help with writing check out these books:
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non Fiction by William K. Zinsser
On Writing: A Memoir of the Kraft by Stephen King
The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing by Rise B. Axelrod
