Starting out

How does one begin writing a novel?

That is the question I am currently faced with. Put all the notions of finishing a novel aside, and focus on that question. How do you begin to write something that may very well take up years of your life? How do you decide that this idea is the “many years of hard work” idea as opposed to the “write a few paragraphs then ‘select all’ + ‘delete’ before anyone reads it”.

I am faced with a gulf of uncertainty and doubt as I begin to face trying to write a novel.

Where do you start? I hoped that a bold and unique premise might come to me in a dream, or whilst sipping my morning coffee, and this premise would be so strong and so tantalizing that spending years developing it would be a pleasure. That each line would lead onto the next and I would begin to “discover” my novel in much the same way that a child discovers the edible joys of non-toxic play dough.

Sadly this has yet to be the case. Instead I am doing what I always do, starting on an idea, giving up after about 2000 words and going back the drawing board.

My problem is not the ideas, my problem is the self-evaluation of an idea before it has had a chance to gestate. Is a novel a novel from the very first line? At what point does a short story become a novel? How do you know these things? Who can tell you?

Surely writing a novel is not a process of starting one day and finishing many years later with “the end”. Do you start on a novel after you have had a short story idea good enough? Is there some kind of process, like Prince2 methodology, that you can follow to “initiate” a novel?

I don’t know how to commit to an idea long enough to make it a novel. Writing my usual turgid first draft is torturous, so why would I continue the relationship long enough if I can’t see the potential?

So this is what I’m asking: how do you know when a novel is a novel and not a short story?

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