284. How to Start Your Novel with Donna Levin

Author and teacher Donna Levin talks about advice for beginning your book, what it means to "just write," and gives tips for getting to the end of that first draft.

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Visit Donna's website:
https://www.donnalevin.com/

Get a copy of her books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B000APR32S

Follow Donna on her socials:
https://www.facebook.com/authordonnalevin/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-levin-50b5047/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Donna Levin has taught writing for over three decades, and she's authored both fictional novels and books on the craft of writing. And we're going to be addressing an important topic that's covered in one of those books. This is "How to Start Your Novel."

Jennia: Thanks for being here, Donna!

Donna Levin: Thank you for having me!

Jennia: When you are looking at helping someone and they're stuck, and they don't know where to start, is there something that you always suggest or do you have a one-size-fits-all approach?

Donna Levin: Believe it or not, I actually do have a one-size-fits-all approach, which is: Just write something. It really doesn't matter what. And we can get into the specifics, or the writer can get into the specifics after that. You know, I go through this myself all the time. I think—I sit down at the start, say, "No, this isn't right. I've got to do it better. Someone else would do it better. This story has been told. This isn't a good beginning. This character doesn't make any sense." All those. So just write something. You can describe the room you're in, you can describe the cafe, and you can describe the sidewalk you're walking down. of course, it's hard to write while you're walking on the sidewalk. And in fact, that's how I got into trouble. But just write something. That is the, you know, the message I tell myself and I tell other people, and then, you know, go from there. I mean, of course, the advice to just write something doesn't take you through the whole book—

Jennia: Right.

Donna Levin: —but it gets you past that stuck place.

Jennia: Mhm! I mean, it seems so simple once you say it, but this is something, even as an editor, that I hear a lot from people where they're stuck on a certain thing, or maybe they're confused by the plot, or they aren't sure which direction to take their world building in. And then they let that stalling point become a stopping point. But, and this is something that you hear editors say all the time, I can't edit a blank page.

Donna Levin: Right. Yes, you can—I think Grace Paley said you can rewrite anything but a blank page. And I have to remind myself of that frequently. In terms of the more practical aspect of starting a novel—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —if you're thinking about starting a novel, you probably have an idea. And I suggest you just write down everything you know about that idea. It can't happen in your head. It has to happen on the page. And of course, these days the page might just be this computer screen, and that's fine. I work almost exclusively on a computer. But write down everything you know about what your idea is. And in the process you'll get more ideas and you'll learn more about it. Again—I can't emphasize this enough, really—you're in your car, you're listening to Spotify, whatever, and the music is taking you to other beautiful places. And it's easy to sort of think that there's this sublime novel out there and it will just write itself, but it doesn't. It in the process of putting words down. You put it down, and then in the process more comes to you. And you keep doing that. I mean, once you have everything written down that you've been thinking about, good chance that you'll have some ideas about maybe where you want to start. And remember for now, where you start doesn't matter. I can tell you that, yes, you want to start at the beginning, where the story starts, and you want to start with a conflict. But, you know, when we're talking about just getting started, it doesn't matter.

Jennia: Do you think that's a common misconception that a lot of people have and that might be why they have a hard time starting? That they do think it will be easier than it is, or that they have to start at a certain place?

Donna Levin: Well, not only is it common misconception, it's a misconception that I have. The only thing that keeps me going is the fantasy that the next book will be easier (Jennia laughs). And it hasn't happened yet. And then, you know, when a book really is finished, it looks like it was easy. And that's the goal. In my first writing book, Get That Novel Started!, I said, "You have to do as many drafts as you can stand without setting yourself on fire. And then one more."—

Jennia: Yes, and that's advice you've updated.

Donna Levin: And then—(both laugh). Thank you. Okay, so you really have been reading it. Because I updated it in Get That Novel Written [Get That Novel Started!] and said it's, yeah, it's two more. I was wrong. I've been wrong before, probably just this morning. So a lot of—and I've been maybe guilty, a little guilty of this myself with, you know, Get That Novel Started! A lot of people kind of try to convince you that it's easy if you just follow these steps—

Jennia: Yeah, exactly.

Donna Levin: —But it isn't. It isn't. But if you want to do it, you want to do it. I mean, that's another thing that comes up for me a lot. People either get it or they don't. I was complaining—maybe a little too much—to a friend via email about how hard it was and how much trouble I was having. And he said, "I don't see why you do it. If you're not enjoying it, why do you do it?" Well, if you get it, then you know—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —why you do it. And so what I realized was, I can't complain to him anymore, and I have to rely on the people I know get it—

Jennia: Yeah.

Donna Levin: —and they're never going to say, "Why don't you quit?"

Jennia: I'm glad you bring that up too. And this cycles over to another topic, which is author or writer community, and that we do a lot of the time have these same difficulties that we're going to encounter, and that they're almost universal, if not universal. But yeah, it's very important to make sure that you're talking to the right person who understands what that's like and doesn't have these easy, breezy ideas of the author life, where you sit down at your desk that is dappled in sunlight with a little flower and a vase on the end, and you just sit down and effortlessly write for three hours a day.

Donna Levin: Yeah. When I first started writing in a serious way, which was more years ago than I particularly care to announce, but then I started telling people that I was a writer. And that was important because it made me accountable—

Jennia: Mmm.

Donna Levin: —you know, I wasn't going to go back to those same people in six months and say, "Oh no, okay. It was hard." But a couple of times people said, "Well, are you going to give yourself a certain amount of time to see if you make it?"

Jennia: Mmm.

Donna Levin: —And what exactly is making it? You know, and I think people—there are people who sit down and say, "Well, maybe I will be the next, I don't know, John Grisham or Emily Henry" or whoever, you know, the genre—king or queen of that genre. And I'm going to—And that happens to people, and they make a big splash, and they make a lot of money. You know, I would love to make a big splash, and I would love to make a lot of money, but there's more to it than that. And also the other thing that drives me crazy—which is a long list, by the way (Jennia laughs)—lawyers go to college and then to law school for three years. Doctors go for a much longer time. And the, you know, there's—the thing with writing fiction is there are no barriers to entry. If you are adept at your native language—and more than one is great, I really only have one—but it's easy to think that, you know, it's like writing a clever email, only longer—

Jennia: Ohh.

Donna Levin: —And there [are] just really just as many skills involved—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: and I'm going to go on a limb here—as performing open heart surgery. But no one would burst into an emergency room and say, "I've always wanted to be a doctor. Hand me a scalpel."—

Jennia: (laughs) Well, hopefully not.

Donna Levin: Hopefully not. But, you know, you have to have an apprenticeship. You have to get feedback. I mean, we're back to the issue of community too—and finding a good community, a good supportive community. Not one that's going to just give you empty praise, but one that is going to give you honest feedback. But also, again, they get it. They get what you're doing. They get that what you're doing is important to you.

Jennia: Well, that was something else that you'd said in other articles and interviews, was the importance of that feedback and that you had to be also open minded to that feedback. Not already ready to defend yourself or say why you were doing this or that. That ability to take it in and really be able to pick it apart and see what's valuable and what's not. And also knowing what resonates with you and what doesn't.

Donna Levin: I think that when people get feedback—actually, just when I get feedback, my first response is—but I think it's common—is either, "Oh, right. That's just what they said, I have to do that, change this, change this, and then it's perfect.", or, "These jerks just didn't understand what I was trying to do." So just reject it out of town—out of hand. And the truth is going to be somewhere in between—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —And the real value of feedback, for the most part, is some months and sometimes even longer down the line where your characters really aren't that likable. How do you make them more likable? Or the story's too slow to start. How do I start it a little more quickly?—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —And, you know, but it's very much a process. Oh, yeah. And you see, it's also so darn subjective, and you're never going to please everybody with what you do—

Jennia: Oh, exactly.

Donna Levin: —you know. In fact, I think the more people you try to please, the fewer you'll please, if you see what I mean, you know. This book is for everybody—

Jennia: Right. But you're really writing it for your mother, or for your best friend, or for your past self. And that's really your audience of one.

Donna Levin: Right! Right. Exactly.

Jennia: Do you think that getting some of this feedback can help someone if they don't know how to start and they are stuck?

Donna Levin: Yeah, I definitely do, actually. I think the problem with writ—You've got to really be willing to be vulnerable—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —And maybe somebody starting a novel would benefit from one-on-one coaching, you know, rather than just throwing it out there to people who are also starting out. I mean, when I look at, you know—With this last novel, when I look at the pages I turned out at the very beginning, they're just embarrassing (Jennia laughs). You know, I'm just sadly not somebody who can just plot a book in advance. Many years ago, my dad, when I was writing my first novel, said, "Donna, I just don't understand. Why don't you just make an outline?" And—

Jennia: Oh no! (laughs)

Donna Levin: —I didn't really know what to say. Now, what I should have said, but I didn't have the language at the time, or I didn't have the—couldn't articulate it at the time, was, "I don't know enough about novel writing to make an outline in advance." You know, and I—if you can make an outline, great. Don't expect to stick to it—

Jennia: Yes exactly.

Donna Levin: —Things are going to change.

Jennia: Or beat yourself up if you don't write an outline ahead of time too. Because I've seen authors where that works splendidly either way. Those people that completely pants it, and then the people that meticulously outline every single thing.

Donna Levin: At the risk of generalizing, I think that outlining in advance is going to work better for people who are writing in very niche genres, romance or mystery, and also been writing for a very long time.

Jennia: So we brought up plot, but what are some of the concepts or elements of the story that readers—or authors, rather—should be aware of or already have in place before they start?

Donna Levin: Well, I know one of your recent interviewee's interview, and he was talking about the specificity of language—

Jennia: Oh yes, definitely. Yep.

Donna Levin: —and how important that is. And using the fewest words you need. One of my little pet peeves is when people use the word "great" for everything. "It's a great wedding!" You see it in advertising a lot. Words like "great," and "good," and "beautiful," and "ugly," and "terrible" are just very general words, so—And everybody has their own writing style. But I think whether it's just practice and getting feedback or some kind of self education, you have to have some mastery of language. It doesn't mean you have to be writing—In fact, I don't like academic writing particularly, but, you know—but you've got to be able to put a sentence together.

Jennia: Yes.

Donna Levin: And then, of course, dialogue. And for that, I suggest people eavesdrop. Dialogue simulates real speech, but it's not real speech. So it's going to be, you know, in real—If you've ever read a court transcript or a therapy session, whatever, people just digress and they repeat themselves. I repeat myself a lot. Or interrupt themselves and change the subject. I do that a lot too. So you want to capture those behaviors, but condense them in a short way. And then, I think, also one can draw on one's heritage and just one's family. I know that my family of origin had certain quirks [in] speaking. My aunt would stop before she finished a sentence once she'd gotten her message across. So I drew on that. But everybody has their own family history. One thing I learned the hard way is be careful about spelling out mispronunciations—

Jennia: Ahh.

Donna Levin: —If somebody has an accent, there are other ways to imply that rather than misspelling words to get that across.

Jennia: Right.

Donna Levin: And character. Wow. I recommend a lot of homework on characters. Write a biography of the character, for example. But then after you write this fantastic, compelling, ten-page biography of your heroine, and you think, "Oh, this would make a good prologue. We need to know everything about how she got to be where she is." And you don't. It's for you. If there's anything that needs to come up, it'll just come up naturally in the writing, in the story. You can have fun with it too. Like, there's lists of questions you can ask. You can have a standard list of questions that, you know—about what this person looks like, what this person believes. And, the most important part, what does this person want? What are this person's goals? When, and I—So when you're stuck on the plot, go back to what the characters want.

Jennia: Yes. That is excellent advice, because that is something that I see sometimes happen in manuscripts, too, where the character doesn't have a defined want or a defined goal. And so then you don't really have a reason for why things are happening. Because so much really is going to center around that. And then that will be what they base their decisions on.

Donna Levin: And then you can't move the plot forward. And I'll say, passive characters are less interesting than active characters. Characters who are acted upon.

Jennia: Yes, exactly. Well, if we go back to people who are still debating how to start a novel, have you ever heard lists of excuses that they've given for why they can't, or why they feel they can't?

Donna Levin: Yes, I hear them sometimes in my own brain (both laugh). It's, you know, I'm going to wait till my job gets less stressful, till the kitchen remodel is finished, till the kids start school, till the kids graduate—

Jennia: Mhm.

Donna Levin: —till, you know, my husband quits his job, till, you know—And there will never be a good time to write—

Jennia: Yeah.

Donna Levin: —There'll never be an easy time to write. And time slips away much too quickly. So I recognize them as excuses. And then you just have to decide whether or not it's a priority for you. The other thing as far as writing goes, especially starting a novel, creating a writing practice.

Jennia: Mmm.

Donna Levin: Yes, you do have to write every day. For a short time is fine, but you have to write every day. Because that's—for one reason—that's how you keep all those details in your head. If one has ever read a long book and said, "Well, how did the author remember all these names and all these details and everything?" The way they did it was by working on it every day. And then it's plugged into your brain. And when you're not working, the ideas come to you. When you're in the shower, when you're taking a walk. And you think, "Oh, yes, that's how I solve this problem." Or, "This is the detail I want to add." So the daily work is really important. It might be different for other forms of writing, whether it's short stories or poetry, but for a novel, every day. Every day.

Jennia: So what does your daily writing practice then look like?

Donna Levin: Well, it's changed a lot over the years. I will say, when I started, I had the luxury—I would get up, and go swimming, and get coffee. And the coffee would get me to sit down at what was a very prim—by our standards today—extremely primitive computer. It was an IBM display writer. And then I'd write for three hours or so and people would say, "What do you do the rest of the day?" I just—Somehow that took the whole day. And then I had kids and it became sort of a different thing entirely. But I still, as best I could, kept to the daily—Not when they were babies, but when they went to school. And that happened rather quickly. And by that time I had a better computer. And there was internet. Then once they were out of the house, I had that time that was, you know, that I could take a couple of hours now. With kids, as any parent will tell you, I mean, then there are interruptions that you just can't avoid. So there is a big balancing act that takes place. Let's see, so the—now, I'll be honest and say, now I actually have the luxury of too much time, and you can have too much time.

Jennia: Mmm.

Donna Levin: And I can sit down and say, "Well, I've got all afternoon. What's the big rush? Oh, here's YouTube!"

Jennia: Oh yeah.

Donna Levin: And I tell students, "Turn off the WiFi!"

Jennia: Oh!

Donna Levin: But, you might have to bleep this out, (whispers) you never turn off the WiFi (Jennia laughs). But I should. But I never do.

Jennia: Well, before we end, you had a book that just recently came out. If you'd like to share a little bit about that with us.

Donna Levin: I would love to! Did such a good cover. (Showing Jennia the book) Peek a boo! It was published by Skyhorse's Arcade in print. And it's a wraparound cover. Love that. Quote from Karen Joy Fowler on the front, Anne Lamott on the back. And it's about four women who get a hold of a talking stick. And a talking stick may or may not have some magical powers. I'll leave it at that for now. On my website, there are links to buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and of course, It's avail—widely available at libraries. I'm not trying to take your money. You can get it at your local library and—or your local independent book stop—bookstore.

Jennia: And do you have any parting advice for our read—our listeners that we haven't already covered?

Donna Levin: I would reiterate: Don't wait. Start now. I was at a writers' conference a couple of years ago where the median average—median age was about—was over 60. And a lot of, mostly women, of course, and they all regretted not starting sooner. So don't wait.

Jennia: Well, thank you again!

Jennia: And thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information, where we'll also have all of Donna's links. And then please join me next week when Elisabeth Sharp McKetta will be here. And she'll be explaining how you can use myths and fairy Tales tales reclaim your life story in memoir form. Thanks again!