How to write a novel

If you want to know how to write a novel, it would be best to avoid formal creative writing courses.

If that seems like shocking advice, let me clarify.

Institutions, like libraries, are warehouses of information. Teachers and professors go through rigorous training in order to learn how to use this stored knowledge and teach it to others.

Does this type of education sound like a roomful of dried flowers or wax apples?

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You can be sure that Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Henry Moore did not learn how to write a novel by sitting in a classroom, writing theme papers and cramming for exams!

They went to Paris where they indulged in all the colors and textures and human experiences that life had to offer.

With heightened sensitivity, they engaged in a rigorous self-examination, making demands on themselves and asking questions such as: “How can I describe this?

"What feeling is it giving me that I want to share with others? What do I really want to express? How can I capture in words, the essence of that person?"

"What are my conflicts? My deepest desires? Are they important to others or just to me?

"What is this duality inside that I’m feeling? How can I create a story from this duality? What am I afraid of? Proud of? Ashamed of?”

Writers are creative beings who thrive on living encounters with real people in real situations
I’m not suggesting that you have to go to Paris in order to write quality fiction or ask these probing questions.

One of my favorite writers, Saul Bellow, used his native city of Chicago as background for his brilliant novels.

Likewise, American-Yiddish writers often traveled no farther than the edge of the New York ghetto where they found their stories among their own people’s laughter and tears. The humor was bitter-sweet; kernels of wisdom were deeply embedded in a carefully cultivated, highly entertaining literary style.

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What I am suggesting is that you live—and study one on one with a person whose passion is to write. Ask them to be your writing coach.

In the long run, you will probably spend far less money and gain much more insight, technique and wisdom by choosing to work with a professional writer rather than enrolling in a formal creative writing course.

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