Every so often it’s good to laugh at yourself. While reminiscing about my embarrassingly bad first novel I came across an old article written by John Hewitt at PoeWar entitled, Want to Write a Novel Badly? Here’s How! In it he lists 32 steps. I won’t admit how many of them I employed in that first novel, but it did give me reason to laugh at myself. Granted, I choked a few times, too.
Here’s what John says:
Do you want to write a novel? Most people try to write a good novel and fail. Dare to be different. Try writing a bad novel instead. If you finish, you will have either succeeded in writing a bad novel or failed and written a good novel. It’s a win/win situation. Here’s a guide to writing an absolutely terrible novel. The path is clear. All you have to do is follow it… [Read more]
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MUSINGS 
I love that. Reminds me of one of the first how-to books I ever read called How not to get published.
I love this. And no, I’m not ‘fessing up.
We really do prefer to think our writing will hold up under scrutiny, even the early attempts. But lists like this hit pretty close to home. 🙂
You have a great blog – great resources.
Enjoyed spending time nosing around.
I’m so glad to have read that at this early stage of my writing career! I’ve already made about half those mistakes and I’ve only really just began. Terribly funny!
Thanks for visiting here, Dramaquill and Tsophia. I enjoy meeting other writers and sharing things I’ve learned along my writing journey.
That was a really nice stuff, especially for me whose first novel is under the planning stage.
Reading those points, they were seeming so pretty obvious that yes, we should not do this. But in practice, we tend to make those mistakes.
I woulld surely try to keep that in mind.
Thanks for link sharing.
Thanks for stopping by to comment, Sarthak. Good luck with your novel.
I just discovered your blog and really like it. It’s creative and inspires me to do a better job on my own blog. I’m a writer as well..But despite past failed attempts I am seriously working on my first fiction novel, which is a kind of mystery with a dab of romance added in for flavor….
I’m pleased to welcome you here. I’m glad you’ve found some inspiration here and hope you’ll visit often. I wish you well in your novel writing efforts.
This is just great and so much information that is just hysterical! Thanks for brightening my day and giving me encouragement to continue trying to figur out how to wirte memories in story form!