In a guest post on Chuck Wendig’s blog, Dan Moren shares lessons he learned writing his fourth novel, The Nova Incident. “Despite having now repeated this accomplishment enough times to prove that it wasn’t a fluke, I still feel less like a master of the craft and more like a journeyman with plenty left to learn,” Moren says.
Moren learned:
- How to mix up his writing routine. “I’d been accustomed to working each morning at one of my local coffee shops, getting some words down on the page before being sucked into the morass of my day job,” Moren says. “But during 2020, that wasn’t really an option.” Moren found substitutions for his morning rituals and the background noises that helped him concentrate.
- How to build a story from the inside out. Although he tends to write chronologically, Moren’s current novel was heavier in the middle, forcing him to find links among his scenes. “The trick became figuring out the necessary connective tissue between those moments—not just because you need your characters to get from point A to point B, but because you need those moments to feel like they’re not just about getting from point A to point B,” he says.
- How to have fun. “One of the risks when you transition from writing as a hobby to writing as a job is that some of the joy gets siphoned out of it,” Moren says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t inject some enjoyment back into it.”
