(This was originally posted on Southern New Hampshire University’s Creative Writing Review Club blog. I’m the club’s Engagement Officer!)

I’m a writer. That’s something that all of us should be able to say with great confidence—after all, if we didn’t like to write, we wouldn’t be here! I’m also an author: a published one, as a matter of fact. But one title that I haven’t been able to give myself is novelist… until now, that is!

I’m currently earning my MFA in Creative Writing from SNHU, and the thesis of this program is a novel. An actual fifty-thousand-to-eight-thousand-word novel, written by me. Which is equal parts exciting and terrifying. It’s been my lifelong dream to write one, but I never did it on my own out of sheer intimidation. Writing a short story or a picture book* is one thing, but committing the time and effort that it takes to create a full-length novel? Talk about overwhelming! Especially because I’ve always struggled to find time to write: partially because I’m very busy, and partially because it’s easier to procrastinate.

Since my thesis courses start next term (and we’re required to have 15,000 words written before the class begins) I’m working on my novel properly now. I’ve quickly discovered that writing a novel is very different than writing a short story. If you’re writing your first novel too, here are five tips that I’ve learned through experience:

• Try outlining – thoroughly!
  I usually keep my ideas in my head… until I starting developing this novel, and I quickly realized that it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of everything. Break down your concept and keep adding details as you go. It will keep you on track and help you remember all of those clever thoughts that you’re coming up with. The same is true for character arcs and character sketches. These tools aren’t just useful for organization: they also help you add depth to your concept. Seeing everything mapped out has a way of revealing new layers and exposing potential gaps.

• Keep yourself organized
  A novel has many more moving parts than a short story. Multiple chapters (and revised versions of those chapters), outlines, character sketches, notes reminding you about that brilliant idea for a detail two hundred pages from now… Do yourself a favor: find an organization system that works for you, and stick with it. Take it from someone who just spent the last week sorting through YEARS of files to find the ones that are thesis-related.

• Label everything
  That organization system I just mentioned won’t work unless everything is labelled clearly. Make sure you can differentiate one revision from the other—I wasted way too much time comparing drafts line-by-line to figure out which file contained the current version—and make it obvious enough that you’ll be able to interpret your code later on. I settled on a system in which each file name includes a description of the content (Chapter 1, Outline, etc.), the month/year I wrote it, and any other key facts (the course it came from, the places I submitted it, the draft number, and so on).

• Keep previous revisions
  Maybe it’s just because I’m a massive pack-rat, but I think it’s a good idea to keep each revision saved separately. Not only does it serve as a back-up in case a file is apocalyptically vaporized, but it preserves your ideas. You might have to ‘kill your darlings’ in one chapter, but who’s to say that the paragraph wouldn’t be perfectly at home in a later chapter? Plus, when you’re a famous novelist someday, your fans might clamor for a glimpse of an earlier draft.

• Commit to writing a little bit every day
  Okay, this is very ironic coming from me, because I still haven’t managed to pull this off. But a giant looming word-count feels much less intimidating when you knock off a smaller number each day. Add all of those pieces together, and you’ll have a novel before you know it! Every bit of writing counts.

Parts of the novel-writing process are just as challenging as I feared… but other parts are far more rewarding than I even dreamed. The length of a novel is also its greatest gift, because it gives you a chance to really get to know your characters and find your writing groove. So what are you waiting for? Start thinking of a concept and get started!

~Alexandra

*By the way, I’m not belittling the effort that goes into writing a picture book at all. It’s HARD! In fact, in some ways, it’s even harder to tell an entire story in such a limited number of words— especially when you’re a writer like me, who tends to be… ahem… let’s say verbose. But for me, personally, the idea of writing hundreds of pages about a single story is more nerve-wracking. It’s a big commitment!