With every novel that I publish, I grow as a writer. That’s the process: Write, edit, publish, learn, repeat.

I’ve always loved to learn new things and writing is no different. It’s a skill that can be improved upon with dedication and practice.

I learned quite a bit from writing my last novel, Ordinary Hero. That’s what this post is all about. Here are ten things I learned from writing my last novel.

1. I need to manually backup my work

For those of you who read this blog or follow me on social media, you know that I almost lost the entire finished manuscript for Ordinary Hero. I wrote about the experience here. I thought my files were being auto-backed-up, but they wasn’t.

When my laptop’s hard drive failed and I tried to access my backups, they were nowhere to be found. For some reason, the auto-backups stopped working eight weeks earlier.

Fortunately, I was able to bring the faulty hard drive to a data recovery specialist and he was able to recover my manuscript and other important files. But almost losing everything taught me a valuable lesson: I need to manually backup my work – not just rely on auto-backups.

2. I need to backup my backups

Not only do I need to manually backup my important files, I need to make backups of my backups. I was so upset over almost losing my finished manuscript that I never want to go through that again.

The only way to ensure it never happens again is to manually backup my work and to make backups of those backups. That way, if I lose one of them, all is not lost.

3. I need to have at least a rough outline

Some people write best after coming up with a detailed outline (plotters). Others prefer to make the story up as they go, writing by the seat of their pants (pantsers). I think I’d probably do best somewhere in between.

I wrote Ordinary Hero more-or-less by the seat of my pants. Although I had written out some basic notes about the characters beforehand, I didn’t come up with a story outline. I just sat down and wrote at least 2,000 words every day, making it up as I went along.

Some people do this really well. Stephen King comes to mind as a famous pantser. But I’m not Stephen King.

For my next book, I’m going to come up with an outline before I start writing. It won’t be too detailed, so there’s still plenty of room for creativity along the way. But I’m going to write out at least a rough outline so I know where the story is going.

4. I need to come up with a title BEFORE I write the book

I didn’t know Ordinary Hero was going to be called Ordinary Hero until I was done writing it. That’s something I don’t want to do again.

In the future, I need to have not only an outline done before I start writing, I need to have a title and a marketing plan, too. It was incredibly difficult trying to do all that after I was already done writing Ordinary Hero.

For my next novel, I’ve already got the title picked out. And I’m currently working on an outline. Hopefully, it’ll make things a lot smoother this time around.

5. Higher word counts mean harder editing

I didn’t exactly learn this from writing Ordinary Hero. However, I did experience it.

I already knew that, the longer the work, the harder it is to edit. More pages means more characters, more dialogue, and more plot. But I’d never experienced it before.

Ordinary Hero came out to over 86,000 words. That’s about 30,000 more than my next longest novel. It was a lot harder editing Ordinary Hero than anything else I’d ever written.

I think that having an outline would’ve made it easier to edit. Or, at least, it would’ve needed less editing. I’m hoping that my next novel needs less since the story will be plotted out in advance.

6. The longer the book, the more satisfying to publish

There seems to be a direct correlation between how long a piece of writing is and how satisfied I am to publish it. Short story: Yeah, feels pretty good. Novella: Feels great. 86,000-word novel: Feels fucking fantastic.

This isn’t surprising. The longer the work, the more time it takes to write. The more time it takes to write, the more satisfying it is to finally be done with it.

Publishing Ordinary Hero has been the most satisfying event of my writing career thus far. It’s as if a massive weight was lifted off my shoulders when I published it. After months and months of work, it was finally done.

7. Each book gets a little easier to write

The first short story I ever wrote was the hardest short story I ever wrote. The first novella was the hardest novella I ever wrote. And the first novel I wrote was the hardest novel I ever wrote.

Usually, the first time you do something is the hardest. Everything is new and requires conscious effort. But once you’ve done something a few times, it gets easier and easier.

Writing novels is no different. Once you’ve written one or two of them, you get a feel for the process. Even though Ordinary Hero was longer than any of my other novels, I had a general idea of what I was getting myself into.

I expect my next novel to be a little easier to write than my last. However, I don’t expect it to be smooth sailing from beginning to end. That brings us to number eight.

8. Each book presents its own set of challenges

In general, each novel gets easier to write than the previous one. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t still be challenges.

My next novel, for example, I’ll be writing in third person. While I’ve written short stories in third person, I’ve never written a novel that way. It’s going to be challenging to do it for the first time.

But the next time I write a novel in third person after that, it’ll be much easier. See number seven.

The only way to learn and grow as a writer is to try new things. Each challenge that is met and overcome helps to develop important writing skills.

9. There is a lot of love in the writing community

When I talked about my hard drive crashing on social media, I had tons of fellow writers offering me some very-kind, well-crafted words. This made it much easier to deal with such a shitty situation.

Turns out, I’m not the only writer who’s almost lost a manuscript. I had several authors share their experiences with me and it made me feel a lot better about my situation.

There is a lot of love in the writing community, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy community. Writing is such a solitary activity that it can be easy to feel alone at times. But there is a great community of writers out there who are happy to help each other.

10. Each book reaffirms my love of writing

Writing can be hard. It can be frustrating. But it can also be incredibly rewarding.

Each book that I publish reaffirms my love of writing. There may be times during the process that I want to rip out what little hair I have left. But, at the end of the day, I love it.

I’ve always been an avid reader ever since I was a little boy. And I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. Now that I’m living that dream, I couldn’t be happier.

Conclusion

Each novel is an opportunity to learn and grow as a writer. Publishing Ordinary Hero has been the most rewarding experience of my writing career. I’ve learned a lot from it and will use that knowledge for the rest of my life.

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