So how long does it take to write a novel? That may depend upon when you start timing the process.
The late Diana Wynne Jones (who would have been 80 today) told about her process:
Often I have the makings of a book sitting in my head maturing for eight or more years, and when I am considering that collection of notions I am aware of exercising a great deal of conscious control, trying the parts of it round in different ways, attempting to crunch another whole set of notions in with it to see if that makes it work, and so on. But I do not feel in total control doing this. It is more as if I am moving the pieces of an idea around until they reach a configuration from which I, personally, can learn. Practically every book I have written has been an experiment of some kind from which I have learned. – Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections on the Magic of Writing
I’ve been doing this for months with Verity’s Oath. One of the first ideas I had, back in October 2013, was of a world where little baseball-sized spheres floated in storms. A small town in the mountains put up huge nets to catch the spheres.
I have had other ideas before, but there was something mysterious about this small group of mountain people trying to catch magical globes. What will they do with them? Where do they come from? Are they worth a lot of money?
Again and again I would mentally revisit this little mountain area and look at the nets set up on the tops of hills and mountains, winds blowing through them and the willowy poles that strung them up. I got to know a boy who goes out after a storm, the wind still spitting around the dark wet rocks, and find something in the net — a very large sphere. The boy can see it is tearing the net apart and will soon break free, so he tries to secure it and bloop! Off he goes into the sky with the sphere.
With every idea I had, I wrote it out on a 3×5 card and dated it. From those original ideas, the story grew and completely morphed into something else. No boy gets carried away in the wind, for example.
It is interesting on how going through scenes and settings and, like Diana Wynne Jones, experimenting with the ideas and rearranging them here and there will lead to new a better configurations.
By the way, if you are not familiar with the works of Diana Wynne Jones, you ought to be. Even Studio Ghibli made one of her books, Howl’s Moving Castle, into an animated feature. Today Google.uk made a Google Doodle honoring her.
[For some reason, the date stamp is saying August 17, 2014. It is really August 16, but that is OK if you realize time is not a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint — it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.]
Novel Experiences 