So You Want to Write a Novel

Okay, so my first question is, ARE YOU NUTS??!! The correct answer is yeah, maybe a little. Writing a novel is akin to painting the exterior of your house with your kid's watercolor brush. It's going to take a long time, you're to going miss spots and you've gotta have a plan or you'll never finish it.

That being said, I'm nuts too because I'm about to start a novel and it's not the first time. My friend and I decided to do the NaNoWriMo thing a couple of years ago. We wrote furiously and at the end of thirty days had each produced a novel length work. Note that I said novel length. I say this because it wasn't actually a novel.

Come to find out No Plot is a problem. But, that being said, I'm glad I did it. The experience taught me that I could write that many words about one thing and not all of those words were bad. It also taught me that outlining is my friend. Possibly my best friend.

I'll be posting about my foray into plotting/outlining a novel over the next few weeks. Feel free to share your plotting tips here in comments. We'd all like to hear about them.