Some novels are written in a rush of inspiration. Most are written on ordinary weekday mornings, by someone who is not yet sure the book is any good. We spoke to a debut novelist — she has asked us to leave her name out until her publisher announces the book — about the routine that got her to a finished manuscript, the feedback that helped, the rejections that did not, and the long stretch in between.
Starting before the day gets loud
Tome Hive: What does a working day actually look like for you?
The novelist: Unglamorous. I'm up at twenty past six and at the desk by quarter to seven with a cup of tea I forget to drink. I write for forty-five minutes, then stop and get ready for my job. That's the whole ritual. Four hundred words on a good morning, a hundred and fifty on a bad one. The number doesn't matter much; what matters is that the manuscript is further along than it was yesterday.
TH: Do you write at weekends?
TN: Saturday mornings, usually for two hours, which is long enough to push past the point where I left off. Sunday is for reading. I need to be reading fiction while I'm writing fiction, otherwise my sentences start to sound like emails.
TH: And when you really don't feel like it?
TN: I write anyway and tell myself I'm allowed to delete it. Very little gets deleted. If I had waited to feel ready, I would still have a two-page idea and a notebook full of titles.
Drafting: forward first, tidy later
TH: How many drafts did it take?
The novelist: Four, more or less. The first one was about ninety thousand words and took five months. It was also, in hindsight, a very long outline written in scenes. The second draft is where the book actually appeared.
The rule that kept the first draft moving
I kept a separate document called notes for later. Any time I spotted a problem — a character who appeared once and vanished, a plot thread that went nowhere, a chapter in the wrong order — I wrote one line about it and carried on. Going back to fix things mid-draft is the most comfortable way to never finish anything. You can spend three years polishing chapter one.
Then the slow pass
The second draft was the opposite: ruthless, structural, done with a pen on paper. I cut about fifteen per cent, removed a subplot that was really a different novel, and gave the main character a reason to want what she wanted. By the third draft I was working at sentence level. The fourth was mostly reading aloud, which is the fastest way to find a clumsy line.
Feedback: who to ask, and when
TH: When did you first show anyone?
The novelist: Not until I had a complete draft. Showing people a half-finished novel invites advice about a book that doesn't exist yet. Then I sent it to three readers, and I was deliberate about who:
- A reader who knows the genre. They can tell you where the tension drops, because they've read a hundred books like yours and know what a sagging middle feels like.
- A reader who never touches your genre. They ask basic questions — why does she care about this? why doesn't she just leave? — and those questions are usually the plot holes.
- A friend who will be kind. Useful for morale, useless for the manuscript. Enjoy it, then ignore it.
Two rules made the feedback usable. Ask specific questions rather than "what did you think?" — where did you get bored? which character did you never believe? And read everything, then wait a week before changing a word. Some notes only make sense once you've calmed down. Others never do, and those you're allowed to refuse.
Rejection, and the folder
TH: How did you approach sending it out?
The novelist: In small batches, and with a spreadsheet. Most replies were polite form letters. A few had a line of encouragement, which I have kept, and one was memorably blunt. The habits that stopped it becoming personal were fairly simple:
- Send to five or six agents at a time, so one bad week doesn't feel like a verdict on the whole book.
- Don't rewrite the manuscript after every rejection. One or two thoughtful no's might justify a change; a dozen form letters don't.
- Record the date, the name and the response. It stops you resending to someone who has already said no.
- Be working on something else. The best cure for a rejection is a new first page.
Also worth knowing: silence is normal, and it is not the same as a refusal. A no reply after the stated waiting period just means no.
From manuscript to publication
TH: Talk us through the route that worked for you.
The novelist: I submitted to agents with a query letter, a one-page synopsis and the first three chapters. One asked for the full manuscript, then asked for an edit, then offered representation. We worked on the book together for a few months. Her agency then sent it to editors at publishing houses. That stage took the longest and was the quietest — weeks of nothing. Two publishers were interested, and I had a conversation with each about how they saw the book. I chose the one whose edit I was most excited about.
It is not the only route. Plenty of writers go straight to independent presses that accept unagented submissions, find their readership through short story competitions and literary magazines, or publish a first book somewhere small and build from there. None of those paths is the consolation prize.
If you're writing your first novel
The advice that holds up, whether you are three chapters in or three drafts in:
- Protect a small, repeatable slot in your week. Forty minutes most days beats a heroic eight-hour Sunday once a month.
- Finish the draft before you judge it. An unfinished novel is unfixable; a bad finished one can be edited.
- Choose readers for the job they can do, and ask them precise questions.
- Treat submission as a separate project with its own admin, its own timetable and its own emotional distance.
- Read widely in your genre and outside it. It is the cheapest craft lesson available.
And keep the folder of kind words. You will want it on the days when the post brings nothing at all.
Photo: JessBaileyDesign / Pixabay
