How do you write a novel?

Participating in NaNoWriMo in 2009 changed my entire approach. Prior to that, I'd attempted at least three separate novels, a play and a number of short stories. My problem was that I had great ideas and I could write for days and weeks at a time, but I didn't ever have a clear ending in mind, much less did I know how to get there. I'd even taken a creative writing class in college and, while I could complete assignments, I couldn't ever seem to complete anything on my own.

While preparing for NaNo, I stumbled across a free ebook by someone who'd completed the challenge several times. Her advice was to plot each scene of your entire story on index cards before you begin writing and use those scenes as a general guide while you write. Lo and behold, that simple bit of advice worked for me since I had to think the entire story out, which included an ending, and I completed the challenge and my novel with relative ease.

It also helped to ignore the editing process as I wrote and not think too much about what I wanted to write or how it was coming across. As LBRW suggests, writers (like myself) can over think the process and become stuck that way. The advice heard over and over again before and during NaNo was to allow myself to write a crappy draft and that as long as I hit the desired word-count, I'd be a winner. Well, write a crappy first draft is precisely what I did, lol.

I'm now in the process of rewriting that story. As my college writing professor used to say, "The key to good writing is rewriting".

So, those would be my three best tips:

1. Plot your story out in advance (even if you change it along the way like I did, you at least have some sense of where you're going.)
2. Don't think too hard, just write (same advice given by Siobhan and LBRW...it's so true!)
3. Rewrite (until you get it right!)

I just thought of a fourth bit of advice that I've only just discovered. That is to write as a pseudonym, like literally. I'm not talking about publishing under a pseudonym, but writing "as" my alias. This ties into the overthinking part for me. I'm one of those people who is constantly thinking, "Oh, what will so-and-so think if they read this?" and that sort of thing really hinders me sometimes. I find myself struggling to be authentic while not wanting to offend people who know me in real life. Something I clearly need to work on personally and professionally, but for now it helps to convince myself that I'm writing under a pseudonym, which means that no one that I know will ever read it and connect it to me unless I want them to. Helps me loosen up during the writing process and be more true to myself, my characters and to my story.

Hope this helps other writers out there and I'm looking forward to reading more advice from other members.