Writing a novel is an act of faith
and what I'm doing to pursue it
I’ve never been good at disciplining myself into a writing routine. In fact, the closest I’ve come to having a writing routine has been to carry my laptop with me to the couch at night, open my Word document, and pray that I can get something useful down before my eyes begin to close.
Work, daily life, and an overactive brain have always gotten in the way of my writing. I’ve always put something else before it. I’ve always decided I have other priorities, other things to get to before I can sit down and write. And so, the idea of me ever finishing anything with the hopes of publishing has never been made solid in my mind.
However, recently, I’ve decided that needs to change.
I can remember with precision the moment I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was eight years old, standing at the back of my second grade classroom, holding a Beauty and the Beast Little Golden Book and thinking to myself that yes, I would read that one again for the kazillionth time. I loved that book so much, that story. An idea occurred to me then. My little eight-year-old brain thought, “I want to make people feel the way reading this book makes me feel.” It was then that I understood, I was going to be a writer.
I’ve never stopped pursuing writing since. However, when it was that I decided I would one day write a book and publish it is much vaguer. I think some part of me believed, even into my adult years, that if I wanted to be a writer it would just happen, that it was just a given.
But the years flew by, as they do when you’re young and you think time, space, and the world is willing to wait for you. I’m now thirty-nine and I haven’t published a novel yet, but I still would like to. Recently, I decided, if this is a goal I want to pursue, then I need to be more disciplined about it. Hoping that the words show up for me at 9 pm, after a long day of editing other people’s novels, dealing with an energetic dog, running around doing chores, *and* finding space to find ease was not the way that I would get my novel written. So I decided to shift gears.
The first thing I did was grab my calendar and under every Friday, I wrote “WIP” in big red letters. This meant that I would make space on this day, no matter what was happening in my life, to try to write. To sit upright at my desk and not slouched on my couch, at a decent hour of the day and not 9 pm at night when all my brain wants to do is wind down.
The second thing I did, and perhaps the most important, is tell myself that, if this is something I wanted to pursue seriously, then I needed to see it as a job. That if I want to gain some financial profit from it someday, then I would have to put in the time. I told myself, “I may not be getting paid yet, but it’s still a job. I’ll get paid in the future.”
Now this is when those pesky negative voices come in to try and deflate the momentum I’ve picked up.
“How do you know you will get paid for this in the future? How do you know it’ll pay off at all?”
I was having a chat just last week with a fellow member of my writing group, and she, a poet, mentioned admiring writers who attempt to write novels. There’s so much unseen work that goes into constructing a novel. So much time. Patience. Commitment.
I responded to her then, “It really is a work of faith.”
I might’ve said it offhandedly in the moment. Just making conversation. But the words have stayed with me all week. Because holy sh*t if it isn’t.
I’m not a religious person. But I understand faith as a concept. I understand the blind hope that goes into believing something is true or that something will work out a certain way.
And writing a novel is 100% a work of faith. I’m blindly going into this hoping for the best. How do I know if it’ll pay off? I don’t. I have no absolute clue about how or if that will actually happen. But I can’t quit before I find out. I have to get to the end. I have to see it through, for no other good reason than I want to.
In my life, I’ve always tried to follow logic over heart. I weigh out my options. I strategize. I think things through to exhaustion. But writing my novel, spending hours of my precious life pursuing the completion of this story in the most cohesive yet beautiful literary way that I can is an act of faith—if not of the heart—that I cannot deny myself. Something stronger, bigger than myself says “Trust. Do. The rest will fall into place.”
I don’t know where the journey of writing this novel is going to lead me. Maybe my gain doesn’t need to be financial but something else. All I know is I need to follow it.
Novel writing update
I started writing the novel I’m currently working on back in 2016. It was nothing but the smallest vignette. Just an image (as these things tend to come to me) of a woman running down some steps, and I got to wondering what she was doing, where she was going, and why. I wrote the first chapter in one evening. Then, I never touched it again. There wasn’t enough content there. It was literally just a blip of my imagination. Then in 2019, it visited me again. And the story unraveled like paper in the wind. There were of course a few gaps. But I knew the general movement of it. I wrote a few more vignettes. It still wasn’t much of anything. Thus, I’ve never been sure if I should commit myself to it.
In my hopes of publishing a novel, I started writing something else. Something “easy,” “marketable.” Marketable it may have been, but easy it was not. It was like squeezing water out of a rock. That story wasn’t speaking to me. Meanwhile, my other story kept knocking at the door of my imagination.
Earlier in 2023 I decided, no more flip-flopping. I’m working on that novel. I’m going to give it the time it so desperately is seeking from me. And I’m going to tell it, to the best of my ability, and hope for the best.
So this space will be dedicated to documenting my progress as I work on this novel and bring it from the realms of my imagination and into the real world. Moving forward, this section is where you can check for updates, if that’s something you’re into.
Currently, I have about nineteen chapters, but many of them are half chapters or untethered scenes and bits of dialogue that I needed to put down in the moment. I’ve passed the 50k-word mark, however, so I have a novel, in essence. I’m working out some of the more “twisty” parts of it, the placement and motives of characters at certain pivotal times. I’m pantsing my way through it, with a general idea of where I’m going. Once I’m finished with the first draft, I plan to print the whole thing out and figure out where the gaps are and what needs to go there, what needs to be added, what needs to change, and what needs to go. I’ve been good about killing my darlings before, let’s see how easily I let go of unnecessary scenes this time around.
I plan to use the last couple of weeks of this year, while work is a bit slower, to focus on writing. The shorter, quieter days should help with that.
Stay tuned to see if I work out that pivotal scene by next week.
Music rec of the week
My novel, though essentially a love story, isn’t a dark romance. But it has elements of it. There is darkness throughout and the relationship at the center of it, between the FMC and the MMC, is deliciously complex, if I do say so myself. This is the playlist I’m into at the moment, helping me to create the angsty vibes that I love so much to write.
Quote of the week
This is the quote that kept resounding in my mind as I wrote this newsletter article this week. For me, faith has to do with trusting what I feel, and knowing what I know. I know inside me I can get this novel written and published if I want to. But only if I want to.
Hi there, I’m Maria! I’m a freelance fiction editor assisting women writers in amplifying their voices through their writing. You can find me on Instagram @theintuitivedesk. Or visit my site
www. theintuitivedesk.com to find out more.
I’m also a writer currently working on too many novels at the same time. You can read some of my past writings here.
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