Author: Liam Smith

It’s been about three months since I started work on my novel, Rosetta, and a little over two months since I described my first impressions of writing it.  I hit 50,000 words last week. That’s a little over half my forecast completed word count, which means I’m near enough halfway through.  At the very least, I’m in the thick of things! And I’ve got some new reflections on the subject of writing a novel to tell you about.  Some of them are pretty surprising; at least in light of my first impressions. It’s taught me a lot about how to write a novel.

I’m so glad I have a plan

A quick one this. I’d never have made it this far without a plan, telling me who is where and what they’re doing at any one time.  Using a plan means that everything is always facing the right direction, even if I can’t keep track of every plot strand at once.  Not everyone writes using the same techniques. But I couldn’t imagine taking on this, or indeed another novel, without a plan. It’s not an especially detailed plan, more just  broad strokes of the plot. But I wouldn’t know how to write a novel without it!

Earlier this week I ambiguously tweeted that I’d written to Ludovico Einaudi. He’s the composer of, among many other beautiful piano pieces, The Waves.  I didn’t mean that I’d written a letter to him, though that’s how it came across. I only meant that I’d listened to his Islands album whilst writing. It’s some of the best writing music I have.

I tend to listen to music whilst working on my books, and was overjoyed to find Stephen King does the same, as he notes in his fascinating On Writing.  Whilst King prefers ‘loud music – hard rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns ‘N’ Roses and Metallica’, I prefer soft stuff – instrumental, electronic, classical…  Music that I wouldn’t usually spin in the car or that I’d learn the drums to.  Background music, I suppose, though I don’t want to mislabel any of the excellent albums below as merely sonic wallpaper.

I remember far back into my childhood when I dreamed of writing novels.  It couldn’t be that hard, I reasoned.  I could write a page every night after school, and more at the weekends.  It would be just like reading a book: I’d find out what happened as I went along.  And for the record, I still think there’s mileage in my idea of an alternate medieval universe in which everyone is accompanied by their own gargoyle, but I’m learning now there’s a lot more to writing a novel than one seed of an idea. In fact, how to write a novel is a multi-faceted question.