1. To paraphrase Nike, just do it. The best way, the only way to write, is to write. If you keep at it long enough, words will become sentences, sentences paragraphs, paragraphs chapters, and chapters become whole books. Bad writing eventually becomes acceptable writing and if you stick with it, eventually the words start to flow on their own. That’s when the best writing happens (for me, it was Chapter 10, “Giving Thanks” in Island Apart.) I only wish I knew how to turn it on and off.
2. Set concrete goals with realistic timetables. Write a mission statement. When I started Island Apart, my mission was to use the skills I had acquired writing food stories and cookbooks over the years to start, write, and finish a publishable novel within a year. Note the words “start”, “finish”, “publishable” and “within a year.” These dictated a course of action, goal, and deadline, which made me take the process seriously.
3. There’s no one “right” way to write a novel. Some writers start with a plot (vague or detailed); others use as their point of departure a phrase, character, situation, or moral dilemma. Some writers craft meticulous outlines before they start writing; others let the characters drive the story. Island Apart began as a title (not the one that wound up on the cover, incidentally. I originally called the book The Hermit of Chappaquiddick). Once I had that title, I knew the who of my story (my protagonists) and the what (what would happen). What I didn’t know was how to get from the beginning to the denouement. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make the journey alone—I had the characters to guide me. They knew where they needed to go.
4. Get it down on paper (or on your computer screen or in your iPhone). A chapter title. A paragraph. A sentence. A line of dialogue. A few words. Anything. It’s easier to write more once you have a place to start, and even if you wind up jettisoning your initial phrase (and you often will), at least it got you started.
5. Write locally; plan globally: When I’m working on one chapter, I also have a future ideas file open. I toggle back and forth between them. As I advance through the chapters, ideas for new characters, plot twists, and chapters occur to me. I write them down in a “TK” (to come”) file. Who knows: you might even get the idea for your next novel this way.
6. To make your characters real, write their biographies. When and where they were born; what they studied; where they live; what they read; what they like to eat; etc. You may wind up using all or none of this material, but it will help you build vivid characters who behave in a believable manner.
7. To make your plot real, write a timeline. Figure out the year(s) the action starts and ends and the time and place of your back story. Write down what people wore at the time; the cars they drove; the music they listened to; the technology they used; the headlines they read in the newspapers. Your time line helps keep you accurate and makes your story credible.
8. To make your setting real, draw a map. Walk the places you describe. Visit the stores your characters visit.
9. To make your narrative feel real, write in the active voice. In my first draft of Island Apart I used a lot of passive constructions—“it must be said,” for example, or “if the truth be told” or “the Hermit was seen walking down Litchfield Road.” Rewriting the story in the active voice gave the novel a lot more energy and power. Similarly, in real life, people may declare, opine, state, explain, cry, laugh, or chortle. Characters say or ask. Anything more than “he said” or “she asked” is distracting.
10. Do your homework. One of the protagonists in Island Apart is recovering from breast cancer. I had no first-hand experience with breast cancer (thank goodness), so I interviewed oncologists, nurses, plastic surgeons, and dozens of cancer survivors. Another of my protagonists lives off the grid and off the land on Chappaquiddick. So I joined a local foraging group. I learned to fish and dig clams and went out with a peep box and dip net to harvest scallops.
11. Write with your eraser (or delete button). In the course of writing Island Apart, I jettisoned whole characters, situations, and chapters. I probably wrote 1000 pages of manuscript to wind up with a finished book of just under 300 pages. It hurt and I fought every deletion (my wife was a ruthless editor), but the final book is better for all the cuts.
12. The first chapter—or even the first 200 pages you write (to paraphrase Tolstoy)—may not be the beginning of your final story. My first draft of Island Apart opened with a trip from New York City to Martha’s Vineyard. I wanted to take the reader on the same journey I’ve made so often—waiting in traffic to cross the Bourne Bridge; lining up with all the other cars at Steamship Authority Ferry Terminal in Woods Hole; driving up the rickety ramp onto the boat; feeling the sea breeze in your hair crossing Vineyard Sound; and finally, the surreal calm you experience on arriving on Chappaquiddick. There was just one problem: The guy whose journey I chronicled was one of my secondary characters and I wasted 60 pages to get to my protagonist and the real story. Once I cut the first two chapters, the book took off.
13. Writing requires equal parts inspiration and endurance. (Perhaps even more of the latter.) Novels are hard work (a lot harder than cookbooks) and part of that hard work is keeping yourself in a chair long enough to crank out the 300, 500, or 1000 pages that will eventually become your story. It’s supposed to be hard work. If it were easy, everyone would write a novel instead of talking about it.
14. Take the time to celebrate the milestones in your writing process. When you finish a chapter, take yourself and your spouse or a friend out for dinner. When you finish the first draft, uncork a bottle of Champagne. (Not Prosecco, real Champagne.) I timed the completion of the first draft of Island Apart (at the time, still titled The Hermit of Chappaquiddick) to coincide with my birthday and made great ceremony of typing the words “The end” just before the celebratory dinner.
15. Be extra nice to your spouse or significant other. The deeper you get into the story, the more you’ll withdraw from everyday life. Your spouse will miss you and complain that you seem absent—even when you’re sitting together the dinner table. Your significant other may get jealous. When you write a novel, you need all the help and support you can get from your loved ones. Make sure you love them back.
16. Don’t quit your day job. Yet. Maybe you’ll knock it out of the park on your first novel. More likely, you’ll write several novels before the public takes notice in a big way and the royalties start to gush.
ETH AINA'S CREATIVE ISLAND. 