When do you know you are ready to write a novel?
Is it during those empty hours when you can't reach out to socialize or to make time for the idiot box? Or perhaps sitting in the classroom, pretending to listen to the lectures and writing down whats in your mind?
Or do you want to wait to get married, have kids, see your grandchildern and THEN think about writing one?
I have heard it a lot, EVERYBODY HAS A STORY TO TELL and it makes sense. But it's hard to tell a story when there is noone to listen. Writing happens when you have a story to tell yourself first. You have to accept the fact that 'I do have something that needs to be said'. Be it fiction or the truth, a story is what makes our lives interesting. We hanker after the local and the celebrity gossip, waiting for something juicy to turn up so that wwe could sit around the coffee table and discuss it. What if we add more to that? Aren't we creating stories already? Perhaps one cannot tell you what age or what time it is when you can write a full length novel but the time you have picked up your laptop and types a page or two and still want to carry on, you know its time. When you can't sleep in the night, thinking about the storyline, you know its time. When you spend your waking hours finishing the draft, you know its time.
Perhaps one thinks that you need the basic qualifications or a degree in literature to write. But so far apart from forming simple grammatical sentences, you just need focus and a lot of passion to write anything. You have to eat, breathe, drink, sleep novel. It does not happen overnight. The process itself will lead you to many mistakes and it might take months or years to perfect the art.
Mostly it's just committment to oneself.
S0 don't wait for the day to be ready. Today is the day :)
