The hardest part of writing a novel is the plot. Without a great plot, you have no novel. Without a novel, you have no readers.
Along with the plot, you need a hook. Even if you have a plot, you need a hook to get your readers into the plot and keep them reading. Without a hook, you don’t need a plot. It won’t matter.
Telling people I’m a writer
When I tell people I’m a published author, I usually get the “Oh, you are” look. Sometimes they will even say it aloud. I’m not sure how to answer them when they do this, but I don’t know many published authors where I live.
Once we get past the disbelief, people will ask what kind of books I write. If women’s fiction and nonfiction interests them, they’ll ask where they can buy them.
People say how they think it’s neat I’ve published books. They might even say they’ve thought about writing a book, but their English isn’t that great. They might say that writing a book is hard and don’t think they could do it.
We can do anything we set our minds to do.
Writing a novel is hard
I’ve published three books — one nonfiction and two fiction. I know writing a book is hard. The nonfiction one took lots of research digging through old memorabilia. The two fiction books took some research of their own.
I had to think of the characters, the plot, the setting, and all the other things that go into a novel. I had to put many words down on paper or in Scrivener. I spent lots of time writing each book.
But if you have 10 minutes you can spare a day, writing a book is not hard at all. The 500 words I’m writing for this post take me about 15-20 minutes.
Getting published is easier now
I’ll be honest and say I used to think I couldn’t write a book either. When I started writing the nonfiction book in the mid 1990s, eBooks weren’t in our vocabulary.
Self-publishing was around with vanity presses like Vanity Press. While I thought about that kind of press, I decided against because of cost.
It was in the early 2000s when I saw an article in our local small town newspaper about Publish America. Another author had published that way so I gave it a try. That way was easy, but I know now it’s not the ideal way either.
And I can’t wait to get my nonfiction out of its contract so I have control of it like I do my fiction books.
Nowadays self-publishing the easiest way to get a novel published. I’ve published my two fiction books this way, and I love having control over them. This method makes it easy for anyone to write a book if they’re willing to put in the work.
Working hard to get published
While self-publishing is easy, getting the book written and ready is hard. The plot is the hardest part, as I stated above. For instance, I’ve tried three times to write the third book of the trilogy. The third time may have to be the one I use so I can move forward. But I’m a little weird in that I have to have a good beginning, or I can’t go on.
I want that great hook to get my readers into the story. I don’t want to lose them before they start reading the rest of the book.
Finding the perfect, or as close to it as you can get, beginning makes it hard to write the plot. Of course, there’s no pressure, right?