I’m writing a novel.
Listen, I know it’s probably way too early to be talking about this, but at the risk of totally jinxing myself: I am writing a novel.
Not “I’m thinking about writing a novel.”
Not “I have an idea for a novel.”
Not “I’m going to write a novel.”
I am writing a novel. Like, right now.
Here’s how it happened:
Last Fall, during an intense bout of burnout/writer’s block, I got really into drawing and painting these super expressive faces. It was fun for me, and soothing, and though I didn’t know where it would lead, I followed that path for a while. I called one of those paintings “The Seer.”
For some reason, this one stayed with me. I thought about it and looked at it and thought about it some more until eventually I realized I wanted to write a story about it. This was the first time something I’d made had inspired me to make something else; I was curious to see what would happen. So I opened a new draft in Substack, titled it “The Seer,” and started writing.
And writing.
And writing.
When I hit 2,000 words and realized there was still so much more to the story, I copied the draft over to Google Docs and wrote some more. I got about another 700 words in before the holidays. Then life got busy. I didn’t open the doc for a couple of months.
But I kept thinking about it. I thought about the scene I’d written so far. I thought about the characters, how they were feeling, and what might have happened in their lives to bring them together the way I saw them in my head. I thought about how magic warped the edges of their story.
And then I thought: This is my first novel.
For context, I’ve never been particularly interested in writing a novel. I’ve had plenty of ideas, sure, but I’ve never really had the desire to do anything with them. I’ve enjoyed writing short scenes without making them part of a bigger whole. It’s similar to my relationship with running: I’m happy to run a few miles. I have zero interest in running a marathon (or a half-marathon, or a 10K). It just doesn’t sound fun to me.
So the idea that I had been working on the first draft of my first-ever novel all this time—and having a lot of fun doing it—was kind of a shock. At first, I didn’t believe it. Why this idea? Why now? I still don’t have the answers to those questions. But after trying (and failing) to ignore the feeling that yes, this really is my first novel, and yes, I really do have to write it, I decided I might as well give it an honest try.
I’ve followed Amie McNee long enough to know that the best way to write a book is to break it up into a series of tiny goals. Like, laughably small steps. So minuscule that they’re almost impossible not to complete. So I chose an arbitrary word count (80,000), thought about how much time I could commit to writing each day without much resistance (about 15 minutes, or 300 words), and did some math.
80,000 words – the 2,700 words I’d already written = 77,300 words
77,300 words / by 300 words per day = 258 days
258 days / by ~30 days in a month = ~8.5 months
Which means I could have a complete (shitty) first draft by the end of August 2026. Add in four months of buffer and that makes it December 2026.
So that’s what I’m doing: Writing an 80,000-word first draft of my first-ever novel 300 words at a time by December 31, 2026.
I’m a little over 8% of the way there at 6,600 words. I have a looong way to go. But I’m going to make it—300 words at a time.
To help hold myself accountable, I’ll be posting daily check-ins like this one on Substack.
I’ll also be sharing occasional longer updates about my journey. No idea what those will look like yet (I’ve never written a novel after all!), but I assume they’ll be some combination of my struggles and my wins and, eventually, sneak peeks into my novel. Jim over at The Creative Life suggested I share lines from my writing sessions or thoughts about what I learned—so maybe I’ll do that? Honestly, who knows.
If any of that sounds like your kind of thing, be sure to subscribe to follow along!
And in the meantime, you can check out some of my other posts below. :)