How to Write a Novel During Quarantine in 12 Easy Steps (Walter)

1. The first two months of quarantine are like the first pancake. Drink some wine, eat some carbs, lower your Netflix viewing standards, and try to embrace the meaninglessness of everything.

2. When it finally sinks in that quarantine is going to last a lot longer than you expected, turn to that novel. Start slowly. Compile your notes, spend some idle time thinking about the fictional world. Stare at blank pages. Marinate in the uncertainty that is this manuscript.

3. On the day you begin for real, sit at your computer for three hours and write exactly one paragraph. Be proud of that progress.

4. Peck away at the novel’s beginnings over the course of a few weeks. Slowly eke out the first two chapters.

5. It’s time to get serious and set a goal: You’re going to write 1,000 words a day, every day, no exceptions. (This strategy works best if you’re a painfully goal-oriented person who will succumb to self-loathing if you fail to meet said goals.)

 6. Embark on that 1,000-word-a-day goal and never say die no matter what. Yes, there are times when the words you write are utter trash. There are times you squeak them out at 11:30 pm. Once or twice you pound out the words while drunk on quarantine wine, but whatever. Get the words down and deal with shaping them later.

7. As scene stacks upon scene upon scene, realize that being cloistered from the outside world and having your day job hours cut has helped you get caught in the dreamworld of the novel. See your characters as clearly as if they’re right next to you. Conjure the city they live in and the places they go as if you’re right there with them. On second thought, maybe put down that quarantine wine.

8. Take lots of walks to think about the book. Jot down notes wherever you are. Discover a trail in the woods that’s full of magic—every time you walk there, you’re flooded with ideas. Return to these woods again and again. Immerse yourself in the novel. Think about it at all times: as you fall asleep, when you wake up, as you feed the cats, while washing dishes, while taking walks, while washing your hands, while washing your hands, while washing your hands.

9. Don’t discuss the novel with anyone else. Don’t share the plot, don’t talk about the characters, don’t say a word. Because it is too new and fresh and fragile. Because it might not turn into anything that can be published. Because publishing is not what this is about. Right now, you are caught in the dreamworld. Keep it that way as long as you can. This novel belongs to you and only you.

10. You’re going to doubt yourself. You’ll doubt yourself hard. How can you not? This is a mess, you’ll think. This is a disaster. And it is a disaster: the manuscript, the world. It’s raw. It’s burning. It’s so early that you can’t yet see it for what it is. You can only keep going, to put one word down after the other in a reckless act of faith.

11. Feel the end of the first draft speeding toward you. Write your way to meet that ending, to type out the final words. But they won’t be the final words, not really. You know that. The trick to getting those words down in the first place is freeing yourself to not think about their flaws. There’s time later to fix things. The world right now is filled with nothing but time.

12. You’re not the kind of writer to type “The End,” so leave the last half of the last page blank. Face that final page without expectations, because who knows what this manuscript will become. All you know is that you created a whole world out of nothing. Imagine all the other universes that exist inside other people at this moment, even and especially in this ravaged year, and feel something like hope. But what now? Now you return to the beginning. Now you start the slow and uncertain work of trying, as best you can, to make it better.

Laura Maylene Walter is a writer and editor in Cleveland. Her debut novel, Body of Stars, will be published by Dutton in March 2021. (Rest assured this is not the novel she wrote during quarantine.) Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Horse Girls anthology (Harper Perennial 2021), Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, The Masters Review, and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers.