Tell me about your experience writing your first completed novel.

After I retired, I discovered historical romance novels. I had such fun reading them that at the age of 70, I decided to try writing one. It's still in the trunk, but ones I wrote after that have sold. I'm certainly not famous, but I do have fun.

Lil said:

After I retired, I discovered historical romance novels. I had such fun reading them that at the age of 70, I decided to try writing one.

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I love this!

I'm working on my first Romance novel now. I got the idea April 28 and as of today am nearly halfway through the first draft. HOWEVER, this is my 4th novel overall (first 3 were Sci-Fi and Fantasy).

Novel #1: I worked on for seriously like 15 years, on and off (mostly off).

Novel #2: Took me 4 years.

Novel #3: One year.

My first completed novel came on the heels of realizing the novel I was working on needed to come later in the series. So my first completed novel was started in October 2012 and I wrote half of it over the course of NaNoWriMo that year. I kept fiddling with it, but never completed it because I knew in my gut something wasn't right. However, I didn't abandon it like other stories I started. I continued plodding along, editing, replotting, etc. over the next two years. I also read a ton of romance during that time, studying what I liked and disliked in other stories/series.

In the summer of 2014, I found some detailed notes from Michael Hauge's workshop "Six Stages of Story Structure" and that's when I realized the characters were solid and the story was solid but the pacing was completely off. So I began reworking what I had. In April 2015, I was about 90% complete and realized at that point the only thing stopping me from completing my WIP was fear. When an agent tweeted she was closing to queries the following month, I decided it was now or never. I sent four queries the following month despite the manuscript not being complete. **DO NOT DO THIS!!** Because I ended up receiving requests within a matter of days, one being a full right out of the gate, and I had to scramble to complete it. But in the end I finished the book. I was offered rep. It sold and was published a year ago.

That experience was of course a huge difference from the book that followed that I wrote in three months and was published two months after the first. lol

Great question, K Corcoran! I wish I could answer it, but I'm still paddling around in the shallow waters of simply trying to get started on a first draft from a huge, highly detailed synopsis. Feeling pretty overwhelmed.

But it was great to hear the answer from those who made it to the deep end. It's very inspiring and gave me an opportunity to check into their books on Amazon to see the finished product. It shows what can come from a little spark of an idea if you tend it well!

So, back to tending...

My first completed novel I wrote in 10 days. I was manic at the time and had to go through several rewrites afterwards. Haven't written like that since.

Used to work at a bookstore, where I was in charge of both the LGBTQ and romance sections. At that point, each section was lacking in the other, and it became a backroom joke that I was going to fix that by writing the first gay Regency romance. When I got out of retail in 2002 and finally had the energy to write, I tried to work on a Roman epic I'd started previously, but my mind kept going back to the challenge of the gay historical romance. I thought it all out in my head, then decided I'd try writing it as a practice novel. What the heck--it wasn't going to be published anyway.

I was still working full time and had a 7-year-old kid as well, so I grabbed writing time whenever I could get it (gave up TV entirely, for instance). It helped a lot that it was all pre-written in my head, meaning I never had to stare at the screen and wonder what came next. And the first draft poured out of me in 40 days.

Went online to learn about writing and selling novels, spent several months polishing the draft. Looked for and found an agent. Took almost two more years to find a publisher--who nibbled, but wouldn't bite until I changed the second half of the story substantially. Made the changes, sold the book, and it came out three years after I finished the first draft.

I started writing my WIP in 2012 for NaNo and got almost to the end when I realized I'd written myself into a corner. I hit the 50k goal, but I could go no further. I wrote a few other incomplete novels until NaNo 2015, when I decided I was going to FINISH something. I deleted approximately half of WIP, back to where things started to go bad (including but not limited to a stalemate with the Big Bad at the end of the world because they didn't have the information they needed to beat him, 10k of not doing anything that amounted to any results, and the MC getting Godmode powers at, like, 30k in) and rewrote with a new direction and clearer goals. The few years between the initial attempt and the rewrite gave me time to learn. study, and grow as a writer, so I was able to finish the novel with a much stronger resolution. And then since that was only 30k of NaNo, I went on and finished two more incomplete NaNo WIPs. It was a good year...

Hmm, I managed my first complete novel during NaNoWriMo 2012, too. (It WAS a good year, Maggie!) 107,000 words in 30 days. Talk about manic. I wound up with 6 rewrites before querying it in 2015/16. In the meantime I wrote several other stories. Flash, shorts, novellas and 40-50K short, novelish works, but I'm only now getting around to finishing a second 80K+ novel.

The experience of rewriting was harrowing for me, so I've been more careful since then not to create so much work for myself. Probably too careful. I keep hoping that the more I write, the easier it will come. I can't say it's happened, though.

I caught a passing idea, sat down to make a few notes and stopped writing two hours later with most of my main characters and story arc captured in one 1500 word scene. Discovery-wrote (aka "pantsed") the first draft in four months, and spent a year in revision.

The idea for my WIP came overnight. I had a beginning,middle and end. The actual writing and editing is going on 4 years. But, I love the process.

This one may make you laugh, but it's par for the course. My writing history has been a tad bit good luck, and a swackload of "that's pathetic!"

Let me 'splain. In the late 70s and early 80s I was privileged to spend my vacations in England. I hired a car and wandered around anyplace I would, and ended up spending a week in "Poldark Country", the north coast of Cornwall. In my ramblings I happened upon a disused well that had a ruined monument of some kind, just a pile of fallen rocks, really. My imagination started playing with it and I got a scene where a medieval couple swears eternal love near a well that's been holy to some spirit or saint since ancient times.

Fast forward a few months. My scene morphed into a time-travel story, set just after the Pestilence in Cornwall. I started hammering it out on an Apple //C, in a software called Bank Street Writer. It took five 5" floppy discs to hold it. I printed it out on a dot-matrix printer and confidently sent it off.

Obviously my target publisher didn't buy in.

Time passed, and I wrote other things. But this story always nagged at me. I lost the printout and misplaced the discs. Several computers later, I'm tootling along in MS Word, and the tale comes back to me. I've sold about six novels by this time. So I set out to write the story from scratch. It was a lot of fun because I "knew" these characters and their tale. The greatest fun was the fact I was bringing to the story a much improved toolkit, and it was much more satisfactory to me in the rewrite than in the initial endeavor. Writing was just a matter of digging it out of my memory banks. I sent it out; it was published. That year it won a modest award in Christian fiction. Now it's in its second publication, and its sequel just came out last month.

To quote the song, "what a long, strange trip it's been."

I love seeing everyone's answers! So many different ways to write a book.

I wrote my first book when I was 16. It was garbage. I think it took me a year. I wish I had kept it, just so I could see how far I've come.
My second book I wrote when I was 18. It took me three months. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to edit. I knew it sucked, but I didn't know how to make it better.
I didn't write another until I was 30. It took me 5 months. I learned how to edit.
Now it takes me between 3-5 months to get out a first draft. I truly envy the romance writers who can get it done in 6 weeks, but that's probably never going to be me.

It took me almost two years to write the first draft of my historical (I'm 8 drafts deep now). It was a learning process. And I sometimes let days go by without touching it, because I didn't know where to go and was afraid it had fizzled. I played games, polished website texts, and grouched.

My first completed romance novel I wrote on the side of other projects. I wrote it for a friend who super liked it, so I ended up submitting it to agents and the likes.

I liked writing it because there was no stress what so ever. It was a "fun" book while I did research and stuff for other stuff.

I was sitting out in the sun while a romantic fantasy played in my mind. It grew and grew until I decided to write it down longhand. Several months later I finally got a laptop and continued to write. In the end the story hit too close to home and I set it aside. However the process was very cathartic and led me to writing more and more.

It took me 1.5 years to write my novel with two parts. My experience was very good - I was lost with the characters through the day. I had to do research since my novel involves history and facts. Plot came effortlessly. Overall a enjoyable journey.

If I don't count my high school "novels" (which were really text role-playing over AIM), then it would be my first romance novel.
I wrote the book in a month (not nanowrimo). Most of it was probably written while commuting from work on the bus. It was a contemporary bad-boy romance with military themes. Self-published it after sending it off to an editor and it did...pretty okay? Overall it was fun.

Technically not a full novel, but I recently completed a novella, which is my first completed body of work longer than a short story or incomplete novel. It only took me about four days once I had the premise fully formed in my head. For some reason, completing this novella has really spurred me on to work harder at my longer novels. After all, if I can go one mile I can go five. I'm not so familiar to writing romance, but I found it a challenging and enjoyable experience. Having some issue with the sex scenes, lol. Wasn't quite sure what to do with them (there's only two very short ones). I initially wrote them pretty explicit (moreso than I like, tbh), but I think I'm going to edit them to be much more discrete.

So yeah, basically writing my first novel(la) has really put me in gear when it comes to writing overall.

This has been SUCH an inspiring thread to read!

I was newly and suddenly widowed. My daughter had been diagnosed with a frightening and very expensive illness. Another daughter was showing symptoms of the same disease. I had to sell the house to pay medical debts. We had good insurance but you never understand the expenses that aren't covered until you live it. Our savings were depleted. I had to move us to a small town--pop 288-- where I could teach and live in teacher housing. Naturally my girls were pissed off, grieving over their dad and angry at not having the things we used to have, like cable tv.

I felt like my life was shattered, too. We needed money. Somewhere, I had notes for a novel about a newly divorced mother who moved her daughters to a house she inherited in her home town. That one turned into Fruit Salad & Wings. In fact I had lots of novel scraps. I started stitching them together, finding the time after teaching all day and two evenings a week. Because we needed the money.

Well, I never made much money but writing the novels pulled my life together again. My girls and I have weathered even more crises over the years. My three girls graduated college. My oldest daughter does my book covers. I live in my own house now, with a swear to god savings account, but those years in teacher housing, with rent and bills paid, were what pulled us out of the financial hole we were in, not the novels.

The writing saved me spiritually. It made me stronger, sharper, wiser--s6

Wow! What a beautiful post, shakeysix! And I checked out a sample of one of your books. You've really got the goods!

Your personal story is truly inspiring.

I'm pretty sure the first novel I ever completed was done back in 1999. I had written hundreds of thousands of words on an epic fantasy before that, but that one is still not finished. The 1999 novel was a contemporary romance / family drama type story.

In 2012, I entirely rewrote that novel with a new 'hero', but kept many old characters still involved, including the heroine and her family members. After that rewrite, I left it for another 6 years. And now this year I've finally picked it up again, to continue revisions. I've rearranged the timeline and added quite a few new scenes (and also about 27,000 more words, which I am now working to hack at). The revisions seem never ending, but I feel that I'm slowly getting there.

NaNoWriMo is what really kick-started my novel writing. I first participated in 2002, and since then I have written a total of 15 novels over the years, most of which still need editing to various degrees. I am very good at writing new novels...and not so good at getting them publication-ready!

The first one I completed was written in 48 hours at a novel writing marathon for literacy. I won Best Adult Novel Award in the judging. It was my second published novel, Sebastian's Poet. I listened non stop to Leonard Cohen's ANTHEM for the 48 hrs, to channel him for one of the two main characters. It was one of my favourite highs ever to write a novel this way. I have since written 7 more at the same yearly marathon... But all the others were done in 72hrs...and none were such magical experiences as that first one!
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