Isn’t “Preparing Your Novel” Wrongly Worded?

If you’ve noticed the tags on this site, you’ll see that anything that has to do with your novel-to-be is labeled “preparing your novel.” You might have thought, “Isn’t this wrongly worded? Shouldn’t I be preparing FOR MY novel?”

First of all, this isn’t a grammatical error on my part. When you say that you will prepare for your novel, you are assuming that you don’t have a novel yet, and that you need to pave the way for it. When I say that you will prepare your novel, I am assuming that you will have a novel soon, and with some preparation and practice, you will finally write your book.

You are preparing that book, not just prepping yourself up for it.

Second, your novel is not going to come at the very end of all this practice. You don’t practice, and then stop everything and just sit down and write. You will be practicing while writing your novel, and you will be editing your novel endlessly.

Your novel is going to be a living, breathing, changing thing. You prepare it because it will be like a long, drawn out recipe that has to be modified to taste great. You, too, will be changing as an author. Nothing will ever be static.

Writing is not going to be easy, and it’s not an isolated process that will be independent of everything else that you do in your life. It will take over your life if you don’t guard yourself; and your life can take over your writing if you don’t make time to write.

Despite all these difficulties, you need to find your balance between your novel and your life. Prepare that novel; don’t just prepare for it.