Looking back at the novels that I have tried to start I found one major commonality. I have taken writing prompts and written responses. Some have the responses have come out great. Because they are so great, I decide that they should be a novel. Or, at least, a longer work. Which has been failing for me. Another reason that this approach failed was pantsing. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it is writing via flying by the seat of your pants. So no preparation, no character work and no development. Pantsing can work for a few hundred words, but a few hundred pages is a whole different animal.. Some authors are able to do it well. I am not one of them.
At one point, I decided to write under a pseudonym and only publish prompt responses. I was bored before the week was out. There are an endless amount of writing prompts out there, so the possibility for material is endless. I will still be writing them to exercise my writing muscles. I’ll share the good ones here too.
The last thing that I have noticed about my false starts is losing interest in longer works. All of my research tells me that the middle of a novel is the most tedious. I have definitely found that to be true. I know that I can fix this by outlining a bit more and just powering through it. And that is exactly what I plan to do.
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