Pretend you are 68 years old. You haven't yet written your novel. You get sick and healing takes all of your attention and energy. Imagine that.
Now write a sentence.
This is my best advice in response to your question.
From an elder to one younger: simply write for yourself, not for an audience.
I read all the time and it fills my head with the stories I’d like to tell and then I never do, hardly even try, because I figure no one would ever want to read it
I get in a groove planning something out or writing bits of prose and get excited about it until part of my brain tells me that it has no point or real message and then I stop and never touch it again
I've been wanting to write a novel my whole life and it took until last year for me to start.
(note: but not my co-writer, who already has a few fanfic novels under her belt. this is her first original novel afaik.) (or her first... novel novel? mm??)
I've written Well for a long time, and had written... say... two... Good Things before — but they were non-fiction essays. Shorter, for one thing — more specifically, they were about a Point, not a Story.
this current novel wouldn't have been possible without finding the story, which took a year.
the idea is what came first. (in this case, a Really Really Clever Setting.) we knew that was rock solid. then we spent a year trying to figure out a story to tell in that setting which made good use of it.
most of that time was brainstorming.
as of like three months ago, we're fuckin kicking ass.
I don’t know, maybe there doesn’t have to be a point. But then I read a novel so good that it reminds me about God and religion and I think, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t make something that would make a person feel.
I have a handful of ideas, the What If, but I don’t know where to go and I don’t know how to tie it up and I don’t know what I’m trying to say and even thinking about it makes me so discouraged I could scream. So I don’t think about it much.
Comments
Now write a sentence.
This is my best advice in response to your question.
From an elder to one younger: simply write for yourself, not for an audience.
(note: but not my co-writer, who already has a few fanfic novels under her belt. this is her first original novel afaik.) (or her first... novel novel? mm??)
this current novel wouldn't have been possible without finding the story, which took a year.
most of that time was brainstorming.
as of like three months ago, we're fuckin kicking ass.
to you I say:
1) it'll happen.
2) I've stumbled into good writing many times, but never stumbled into a good story — only a good element, which then required a lot of hammering.
But your editor will need to work on the punctuation a little.
"Do you think I'll ever write, 'My novel?'"