If you are constantly looking over your shoulder, you may not finish your novel. You will be too busy battling the thoughts of it not being good enough. No one wants to be humiliated or rejected. Your inner critic will paralyze you by telling you just how bad it really is (even if it’s not). This is an obstacle that I have had to overcome. It hasn’t gone away, I’ve just learned to deal with it.
I remember doing a Bible study on the battlefield of the mind. Though it’s primary purpose was dealing with spiritual warfare, it also related to many of the issues that we deal with in our everyday lives. Our mind is a battlefield. In writing, for example, all of us worry about looking dumb and never getting published. Fiction writers make a business out of being scared, and not just looking dumb.
It took me six months from the time I started writing my novel, to tell my husband what I was doing. When I finally told him, I was a mess. I knew he would be excited for me and encourage me in my endeavor, and I didn’t want to let him down.
For the longest time, I treated my novel as a hobby. That’s not a mindset that will get you published. When I finished and sent it out to the first few agents, I was more than a little anxious. The first few rejections confirmed my beliefs. I just wasn’t good enough.
Note that I said, “I wasn’t good enough.” Well, that’s not exactly true. The truth is the novel wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t ready. The fact is, it was filled with grammatical and structural errors, there was some serious head hopping going on, and my on-the-nose writing was all but bringing the story to a complete halt. If you are not familiar with these terms you should be. Go back and read the posts I have written or surf the web.
I don’t know that the inner critic will ever go away. So how do you combat it? You keep moving forward and growing in your craft. Don’t stop writing. I still question my novel, but I know, that I know, that I know, that it’s a lot better than it was after the unofficial first draft. I’ve learned the hard way and hope you avoid some of my pitfalls.
-Jan R
People Do:
Add authenticity to your writing by exploiting your experiences. Use what you know and what you’ve gone through as a person.
According to Orly Konig, if you use it wisely, social media isn’t a time suck – it’s a gold mine, and I agree.
I love Writer’s Digest. If you’re a serious writer, you should consider subscribing to the magazine. They have great articles from published authors that cover a multitude of subjects-related to writing of course 🙂
I remember when I first started taking my writing seriously. I did a lot of research and read a lot of information on how to write a publishable novel. Somewhere along the way, I missed the part were narrative and exposition were not the same. As a matter of fact, I used the two interchangeably.
You have to find the right balance between dialogue and narrative, especially in the first chapter of your novel. While slow to start openings with a lot of narrative were popular at one time, these days, readers prefer a faster-paced opening.
I’m trying a little experiment this morning. I wrote what I thought was a really good blog on suspense, and I got very few hits. I decided the issue was the title. So for those who read this blog under the ineffective title, I apologize. For those who are reading this blog for the first time, I hope it helps. The title does matter, but that discussion is for another day.
There are so many misused words out there I couldn’t possibly list them all, so I concentrated on the ones that I have problems with. 
Writing your first novel-Things you should know 