How to finish a novel: tracking a book's progress from idea to completion

When Wyl Menmuir sat down to write his first book, he was well aware it was something many aspire to but few achieve. “I knew I needed help to avoid it being just a stack of paper that sat in my bedside drawer. I know too many people who have written half a novel,” he says.

So Menmuir deployed every tool he could think of. He embarked on a creative writing MA for which the planned novel was his thesis. He set himself daily goals. He deployed software to block his access to social media. And he also downloaded an app called WriteTrack (later renamed Prolifiko), which allowed him to set word counts and track his progress.

The result was the Booker-longlisted novel The Many and, thanks to the data he collected through the app, we have a rare glimpse into the process that made the book a reality. The following excerpts are a collection of the notes Menmuir posted in the app and the word count he logged at various points.

The best laid plans

Menmuir realised early on that he would need every tool at his disposal to finish his first novel. Having trained as a journalist he decided he would work better with a deadline and set himself a goal of writing 500 words a day, five days a week.

The original aim …Had Menmuir stuck to his self-imposed deadlines the 44,242-word novel he eventually wrote could technically have been written in just 124 days:

… and how long it actually tookWithin just nine days of setting out to write, he had his first realisation that his 500-words-a-day goal might not work out. Although he didn’t know it at the time, it would actually be one year, 10 months and two days before the novel was complete.

So what goes into making a novel?

Overcoming self-doubtThe data Menmuir collected through the app is peppered with occasions of self-doubt and the fear that what he was writing just wasn’t good enough.

“I would think the idea was rubbish and why was I bothering with this, so yeah, I definitely had real lows about it. I never hit delete, although I was tempted a couple of times,” he says now, looking back.

“I think putting your work out there is a very vulnerable thing to do. And I think that’s quite scary and you want to do it justice.

“All the way through I had these moments, especially when I read stuff back, where I thought: ‘That’s nowhere near as good as it was in my head.’ The idea in my head was brilliant as far as I could tell, but the words on the page were lacking, so I had to sort of bridge that gap between the two.”

Embracing the feel-good momentsThe self-doubt he experienced at certain points was tempered by moments of elation.

“Sometimes when I read things back and I’d surprised myself, when it was better than I’d thought,” he says now as he thinks of the ups and downs he experienced during the writing process.

And there were other, more personal, moments that kept him going: his daughter sitting down with him to write or a picture he received of his nephew writing his own novel, having been inspired by his uncle. “Those things really, really helped,” Menmuir says.

“It sounds a bit cheesy, but one of the big reasons I wrote the novel was so I could look my kids in the eye and say: ‘If you want to do something big and creative, make the time to do it. Even if you’re really busy, even if you’ve got other pressures, even if you need to be making money or whatever.’ The novel was never going to make me my millions but I thought it was really important to do, so I wasn’t being hypocritical.”

Procrastinating (well)It wasn’t always easy to stay focused. And while some distractions – like reading and taking walks – ultimately proved productive, others, like social media, tended to interrupt the writing process.

Menmuir freely admits that social media and other online temptations were a constant distraction: “Twitter, Facebook, Guardian crosswords … I’ll pretty much do anything other than write because most things are easier than writing,” he says.

Such was the pull of online distractions that he used technology to fight technology: an app called SelfControl blocked him from using social media on his laptop when he was supposed to be working.

But he says other, more traditional kinds of slacking, such as walking the the dog and reading books, gave him a well-needed break.

“Having breathing space really, really, really helps. On a long walk you’re subconsciously mulling it over. Your mind is working on it even though you’re not thinking about it,” he says.

Like many other writers, he says reading other novelists’ work helps inspire his own. “It’s important for me to read quality writing,” he says.

“At the moment I’m reading James Salter’s Light Years and the writing in it is just blowing my mind. I think it gives me something to aim for. Each of his sentences is just beautifully crafted and it makes me want to craft my sentences, not like his necessarily, but it makes me want to up my game.”

Downing toolsTime off is important to maintain perspective. But how do you take a break without breaking the spell?

“You’re living with a novel day in, day out. You’re living with the whole setting, the characters, they’re running around your head. And I think, sometimes, like with any group of friends, you need a break sometimes. You just need to get away from the intensity of it all, because I found it to be a very intense process.

“But the longer the break you take, the further away from the novel you get, and I always worry that I’ve lost something essential in taking a break … but sometimes it needs that distance.”

Celebrating milestonesThree months into the process Menmuir achieved his first big milestone of 10,000 words. It would, however, take another nine before he reached the 20,000 mark and longer before the words on his computer screen began to feel like something more tangible.

Looking back now, he says, by marking each of these milestones, “I felt I was making progress”.

Other milestones were not within his power but were hugely important in realising his dream of completing a novel: “When Salt approached me and said: ‘We’d like to publish it,’ it was totally unexpected … That was a massive moment.”