This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

When you wake up and return to the book, you will be amazed by the realization that you are further along than when you left off yesterday. While you sleep, mountains are moving deep within your psyche. You may have spent only an hour and a half working on the book, but the rest of the day will be rife with motive moments in your unconsciousness-moments in your mind, which will be mulling over the places your words have touched. What, you ask, is the dream of a story? This is a mood and a continent of thought below your conscious mind-a place that you get closer to with each foray into the words and worlds of your novel. This is enough to bring you back into the dream of your story. Some days you may be rewriting, rereading, or just sitting there scrolling back and forth through the text.

The way you get to this unconscious place is by writing every day.

These moments are when you have connected to some deep place within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write to begin with. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist's ragged heart. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. The connections, moods, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. What do I mean by this? I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The most important thing I've found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. Writing is a serious enterprise that takes a certain amount of constancy and rigor.īut will and regularity are only the beginnings of the discipline and rewards that daily writing will mean for you. Some days I miss but rarely does this happen more than once a month. It's the first thing I do, Monday through Sunday, fifty-two weeks a year. How much? I write three hours every morning. Getting your words down on the page takes time. If you want to finish this novel of yours within a year, you have to get to work! There's not a moment to lose. There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work. The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day-every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. The General Disciplines That Every Writer Needs Visit our Web site at First eBook Edition: April 2007 Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley