Top 10 Reasons to Write Your Novel Out of Order

Posted on by Cathy Kirch

Great novels feel seamless. 

The plot is tight, the conflict compelling and believable, the characters jump off the page. Every detail feels organic, as though it couldn’t have been written in any other way than what we’re reading.

This impression, however, can be a little misleading. 

When we flip through published novels on bookstore shelves, it’s all too easy to imagine that the writer simply sat down and churned out the book from beginning to end. 

But this is actually not how most authors work.

Research comparing processes of novice and advanced writers finds that experienced writers tend to work on whatever is easiest for them at the moment, rather than forcing themselves to work in a specific order.

Many writers I’ve worked with who write out of sequence (especially those of us with ADHD) view their nonlinear approach as a sign of their own incompetence—when in actuality it’s a sign that they’re relatively advanced in their process.

So here’s the good news: Just because our readers will read the story linearly, from page one to The End, doesn’t mean we have to write it that way—it doesn’t mean our process has to be linear.

Writing out of sequence can be incredibly freeing, and there are a lot of advantages to this approach.

Here are my top ten reasons to write your novel out of order:

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How to Set Up an ADHD-friendly Writing Schedule

Posted on by Cathy Kirch

“Just sit down and write.”

“It’s not about having time, it’s about making time.”

“If you really cared about writing, you’d do it.”

The problem with most writing advice is that it assumes what works for neurotypical writers will work for all writers.

But for writers with ADHD, these refrains only serve to make us feel worse.

Wanting to write but, inexplicably, not being able to, is like being trapped in a glass box where you can see the other side—can see other people doing it—but everywhere you turn you’re bumping into an invisible obstacle.

Once I started working with more writers like me—writers with ADHD—I began to realize that these invisible obstacles weren’t laziness or procrastination or lack of motivation.

They were part of the ADHD experience that most writers (and most writing coaches) don’t understand.

What follows are strategies I’ve used to help both myself and other ADHD writers make more consistent progress on a regular basis. Here are some simple steps you can take to create a writing schedule that works with your ADHD—instead of against it.

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Beyond Plotter/Pantser: How to Level-Up Your Writing Practice

Posted on by Cathy Kirch

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

This question comes up a quite a bit in the online writing community, drawing a distinction between the writers who painstakingly map out their plot before writing (the “plotter”) and those who write “by the seat of their pants” and dive into writing without planning (the “pantser”).

At first glance, this distinction seems useful. And in many ways, it is.

But there is a lot more to this question than people realize—and a huge missed opportunity in the way it’s currently being asked!

Continue reading Beyond Plotter/Pantser: How to Level-Up Your Writing Practice

NaNoWriMo: What You Need to Know Before Committing

Posted on by Cathy Kirch

The flurry of clacking laptop keys. Coffee rings staining our notebooks. Refrains of “I can’t! I’m writing!” filling every cafe, library, and living room.

It’s here. November and National Novel Writing Month. What we affectionately call “NaNoWriMo” challenges writers to complete a novel of at least fifty thousand words in the month of November.

This can be intimidating, especially if you’ve never finished a novel, or if you’ve never written that much in that short of a time frame, or simply if you’re not used to maintaining such a rapid writing pace. For some, even thinking about keeping up makes the palms sweat.

So… is it worth it?  Continue reading NaNoWriMo: What You Need to Know Before Committing

How to Set Goals That Will Actually Make You Write

Posted on by Cathy Kirch

Last month you said you’d have 50,000 words by the end of the summer. Last week you said you’d finish your story by the end of this week. Yesterday you said, for the 100th time, “I’ll write tomorrow.”

Sound familiar?

I’ve been there—making promise after promise, scribbling an arbitrary word count on a post-it note like it was going to force my fingers to the keyboard.

And I’ll be honest: sometimes I’m still there.

It was worst during the year that followed turning in my MFA thesis. Now that deadlines no longer breathed down my neck, there was nothing constantly driving me—or my writing—forward.

Nerd that I am, I researched my heart out. I read up on productivity, on goal-setting strategies, on the writing habits of famous authors. I dove so deep into the work of others I forgot my own, and every time I tried a new strategy, I gave up almost immediately.

I was thinking a lot about how to get myself to write, but I still wasn’t writing.

Why wasn’t I writing?

And it wasn’t just me.

This was an issue plaguing many of my friends and fellow MFA grads—and it continues to be an issue for a lot of writers.

The problem with the way we set writing goals is, most of the time, we’re not doing so in a way that will actually get us to sit down and write.

We make the mistake of assuming that because so-and-so famous writer produced a thousand words a day, or followed such-and-such specific schedule, that we have to operate within the same goal-setting framework. As though all writers are wired the same!

Which is crazy, really, because something that often defines writers is how not like everyone else we are.

We pride ourselves in thinking outside of the box, in seeing the world differently—and yet we try to fence ourselves within these arbitrary parameters because, hey, it worked for Hemingway/King/Woolf/insert-famous-author-here.

The key to setting effective writing goals is recognizing that different writers write differently—and should set their goals accordingly. When I struggled to set writing goals that worked, I failed to consider a crucial piece of the equation: me.

I’ve outlined three goal-setting styles below—along with how to decide which approach is the right fit and how to modify them to make your goals work for you.

Continue reading How to Set Goals That Will Actually Make You Write