This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Liz Fenwick's debut Novel is out now. It's called The Cornish House.
1. Write what you know. It saves time. When I began writing fiction seriously in 2004, I only had the school hours, which with doing everything else that a full-time mother has to do, equalled two hours a day. I’d try and scrape more time by using the waiting period at the school pick up working in the car. My first novel wasn’t a great work of literature, but it was a complete novel and it proved to me that I could do it.
2. Read. Reading is necessary for every writer. You learn what’s good and bad and you learn what is selling. One of the most important things a writer needs to know when submitting to agents and publishers is where the book fits in the market. If you don’t read widely, you won’t have this answer…even if the answer is that it doesn’t fit and you’re creating a new one – sci-fi meets gothic love poetry anyone?
3. Don’t send your book out too soon. And under no circumstance, send it before you have written the complete book. I was lucky that both publishers and agents saw enough in those early submissions to ask to see what I wrote next, but I know I tried too soon. How do you know it’s too soon? A first draft is too soon.
4. Learn to love rewriting and editing. This is where the real writing begins. Your first draft of a book is like the mass of marble a sculptor begins with…it is the cutting and the shaping of that mass that makes a good book. Embrace this process. It will be the making of your writing.
5. Read your book aloud. In fact one step better, use text to speech software. Nothing like a computer generated voice with no inflection to tell you if the prose on the page is any good.