How to make steady, consistent progress on your novel 

If you’re anything like me, writing the opening pages of a novel is one of the best, most magical parts of the entire drafting process. Everything is new and interesting! The idea is still shiny, still full of potential! The words practically pour onto the page.  

Then — quite rudely, and without any warning — the words only drip. A few sentences here, a single paragraph there, until your brain feels clogged, the ideas stopped up.  

While it’s common to hit a creative block or two (…hundred) as you’re drafting your novel, there are three techniques I always recommend to writers for pushing through those barriers and consistently getting words on the page. 

1. Set a goal for yourself every time you sit down to write — and keep it reasonable.     

Your goal will be dictated by what makes the most sense to your process. Perhaps that’s a word-count goal, or a page-count goal, or a certain number of scenes you want to write that day. Whatever it is, be sure to keep it reasonable, i.e. keep it small.  

You might think setting a small goal for yourself is a counterproductive way of making good progress on your draft, but I’ve found that small goals actually take the pressure off. There’s a huge difference for me, mentally, at the beginning of a writing session when I have a goal of five hundred words versus one or two thousand. When it’s only five hundred, I feel like I have a chance! After all, five hundred is only one hundred words five times, and I can definitely write a hundred words.  

The best part is: once you hit your reasonable goal (which you will; I believe in you), you get to feel like an absolute rockstar for accomplishing exactly what you set out to do, and I find that when I have that feeling, the words keep coming! And if they don’t, that’s okay, because you still accomplished your goal and still made progress.  

2. Give yourself “short assignments” 

This technique comes from Anne Lamott in her excellent craft text, Bird by Bird. She  notes how easy it is to become overwhelmed by the huge scope of writing a novel, so she recommends breaking it down into much smaller chunks, i.e. short assignments.  

Examples of short assignments might be writing the first paragraph of a chapter, writing just the dialogue in a scene, or finding the right transition between one section and the next.  

Once you finish one assignment, you can take a break (or, my favourite, reward yourself with chocolate) and then dive into another.