This book promises to help you write

Promises, promises… but this book’s may become yours.

Are you familiar with writing fiction over twenty pages? A real pain. As someone who has published two novels, putting one together and making it make any sense can drive anyone crazy: each paragraph, each sentence raises new doubts and unknowns. All other issues stem from the blank page.

An author, even the most uncreative, has all the possibilities at his disposal. The only limit for a writer is his vocabulary, unlike a director or songwriter. His work has no boundaries because he has complete freedom of action. Fortunately, EsPop Ediciones’ ‘This year you write your novel’ by Walter Mosley helps novelists narrow down their massive workload.

Mosley’s most famous character is the African-American detective Easy Rawlins, who debuted in 1990 in ‘The Devil Wears Blue’ (adapted into a film starring Denzel Washington) and has since appeared in sixteen novels. He has written a delightful essay of just under 150 pages with some of his own advice. Although he is best known for crime fiction, Mosley has written science fiction and superhero comics.

What magic advice does Mosley have to help you write a great novel in 150 pages? When valued at the bottom, they are few but surprisingly valuable, and can be summed up in two basics. First, believe in yourself and your work. Second, consistency, lots of it. If you take anything from ‘This year, write your novel’, it’s that you must sit down and write each day, the hardest task. The author explains that the novel is written unconsciously. Sitting down to write daily will keep you writing even without the paper.

I try not to miss a writing day since I started writing methodically rather than to kill time. Mosley suggests finding a quiet, uninterrupted time of day. My time is six in the morning, when no one else has woken up (neither at home nor on the street, since the sidewalks haven’t been laid yet). Although I can’t go to bed too late and no one likes to wake up early, the hour of silence is priceless. And Mosley says so in his book.

A hidden lesson permeates the book from start to finish. The title, ‘This year you write your novel’, implies that first piece of advice, trusting in oneself. Mosley’s simple lesson must be internalized: anyone can write a novel. The sooner you accept that writing a novel is not magical, that it does not require a talent only a few privileged people have, and that it does not make those who do it special beings (beware of writers who claim otherwise), the sooner you can write your own.

Mosley’s proposal resembles a self-help book more than a technical or creative manual. Don’t worry—Mosley seems to suggest that you can, but if you fail or don’t like it, that’s okay too. Mosley’s simple lessons are lighthearted to show us that anyone (including you) can write a novel, but you don’t have to have the day. A novel, after all. Maybe it’s not ‘War and Peace’ either.

“I’m not promising a masterpiece, just a proper first novel of some length,” Mosley says, and he ties together some ideas about how to write a draft, basic ideas (first or third person, omniscient narrator or not), and light thoughts on what makes a minimally readable novel. In summary, anyone can write a novel with low stakes and simple advice. You only need this book’s push.

This book promises to help you write

Promises, promises… but this book’s may become yours.

By knl9j

Related Post

Tolkien animated adaptations’ curse persists

No platform will allow shared accounts

An army of 53 Chinese aircraft and 90 ships off Taiwan

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You Missed

Tolkien animated adaptations’ curse persists

We’ll see what’s never been shown before

No platform will allow shared accounts

An army of 53 Chinese aircraft and 90 ships off Taiwan