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Writing your first novel is a big deal. If you pardon the ridiculous metaphor, writing your first novel is not unlike the first time you slept with someone: It’s exciting, scary, fascinating, and – looking back – kind of special yet also pretty “meh”. The trick in learning how to write your first book lies in understanding what to expect.

But there’s more.

To continue the same symbolism, just as a new partner makes it feel like the very first time all over again, you might have written ten books, but you can still get the “writing my first book” experience all of a sudden. In other words, even if you have already written at least one book, this post applies to you too.

Drawing from my own long and sometimes painful experience, in this post I will give you some simple but useful tips on how to write your first book of fiction – whether it’s your literal first or the first book in a new beginning you want to be making.

The Peculiarities of “First Time”

As I mentioned in the introduction, “first times” (in writing books as well as personal relationships) can be peculiar things.

And now, I can’t help but quote from Illiterary Fiction an excerpt the ambiguity of which passed unnoticed by most readers – though hopefully not by you:

Paul remembers where the photo was taken; in a toy store, three days after they first met and a couple of hours before the first time they had sex. The phrase “first time” vibrates in his consciousness, painting his being with an indistinct emotion. Sometimes a first time is not really a first time, whereas sometimes it actually is…

The reason I remembered this – and decided to include it in a post on how to write your first book – is that “a first time” is a fluid concept.

By the time you have decided to write your first novel, you have certainly written tons of things, fiction and nonfiction alike. Some of them might be long texts – there are people who decide to write their first book of fiction having already written a university thesis.

Indeed, you might have already written books before, but you feel you’re ready for a new beginning – either because you haven’t written in a long time, or because you would like a new beginning.

To keep this as simple and useful as possible, I have divided my advice into two parts: do’s and dont’s. We’ll start with the latter, to get the… negativity out of the way, and then we’ll take a look at the stuff you can do to write your first book in a way that does it justice.

How to Write Your First Book: The Dont’s

Once again, may I repeat two things.

• These are lessons I learned myself the hard way, by banging my head against the proverbial wall.
• It all boils down to knowing what to expect.

It’s important to realize your experience is unique. In other words, be really careful when you try to see what others are doing. You might inadvertently become a cargo cult writer.

With these in mind, here is what you should avoid when you write your first book. I’ll give you three dont’s and three do’s.

No, It Won’t Be a Best-Seller

With the caveat that only an author can assess their own work, not only will your first book not be a best-seller, it won’t even be very good.

I laugh at it now, but when I wrote my first novel, before I even finished high school, I honestly believed publishers would beg me to have it published. I had an out-of-this-world plot idea (rather literally; it was fantasy), and I thought it was the most original thing ever written.

The truth is, as I’ve explained before, plot is not only overrated, but by placing your proverbial eggs in the basket of plot, you run the risk of overcomplicating things.

No, Your First Book Doesn’t Need Experience

By that, I mean neither life experience nor writing experience. Recently, on an exchange I had on LinkedIn, someone basically said they’d like to write a book, but they’re very young and feel it’s not “appropriate”.

As I told them, some of the most boring people I’ve ever met had decades of “experience”. The thing is, the only kind of experience you need as a writer is the ability to reflect on your world – and particularly your memories. Writing is a process related to imagination and creativity, which isn’t about quantified experience.

In other words, if you feel the need to write something, that’s all there is to it. You don’t need anything else.

No, Writing Your First Novel Isn’t Worth Sharing

This is probably an unorthodox piece of advice. You constantly hear people telling you to share your work – if not publishing it, at least offering it to friends and acquaintances – in order to get feedback.

Pointless.

I guarantee you, you won’t get any useful feedback from a general audience – and certainly not from friends. If you can find someone experienced, who knows what they’re doing, they can steer you in the right direction.

But when it comes to a general audience, they’ll be reading your book not as a first book (and likely a draft), but as a mature product. They will see shortcomings – unless, ironically enough, if they’re friends or relatives and are too blind – but they won’t be able to pinpoint what’s wrong with it.

The things is, sadly, general audiences don’t have the capacity to understand first books, and sometimes not even any kind of books. Keep your first book to your own self. I’m about to show you what to do, then, to figure things out.

How to Write Your First Book: The Do’s

Let’s do this in reverse order now: I’ll start from the last “don’t” and work backwards, attempting to offer you a counter-suggestion.

Yes, Your First Book Can Teach You

But you must learn the lesson directly. There can be no mediator in the form of a general audience, a feedback group, etc. Unless, as I mentioned, you can find a creative-writing specialist who can show you how, you have to rely on yourself.

After you finish the book, let it rest. Then go back to it as a reader and note what you liked and what you didn’t. Be critical but not harsh. Remember: Your first book is not a best-seller. At the same time, it’s not worthless either (more about it in a moment).

Yes, Writing a Book Improves Your Experience

If you are open-minded and willing to learn from your first book, it can teach you. Which, in turn, can increase your experience. I mean this in terms of both writing and life experiences.

That is to say, writing your first book can help you see what works and what doesn’t in terms of the craft. Ultimately, such experience amassed leads to developing an authorial voice.

However, it also means you become more experienced in terms of understanding how affect works in literature. To write your first book is to acquire a life experience that, in turn, can help you enrich your imaginative process and boost your ability to write better. It’s a self-feeding mechanism.

Yes, Even Your First Book Is Worth Something

Your first book might not be a best-seller (assuming you want to be a professional writer), or even very good. But it is still worth something.

Mind you, I don’t mean it simply as a teaching tool, as described above. I mean it in purely literary terms: Your first book has something worth developing or continuing.

That’s where reading it from a reader’s perspective is important. If you’re honest to yourself – neither excessively harsh nor naively admiring – you will find quality parts in it.

Perhaps you liked the way you managed to use beautiful but functional descriptions. Or maybe it’s the way you used foreshadowing. Or maybe it’s how you managed to create realistic, relatable characters.

Whatever it is, build on it.

A Twist in the Plot of How to Write Your First Book

There are no first books. There are no last ones, either. Or, if you’d rather see the flip side of it, all books are first books.

The truth is, there is never a truly “first book”, and there is never a “last one”. What I mean by that?

Literature, like all art, is a subjective, ambiguous process. Unlike math where you can solve an equation, a book is not something you finish; rather, you abandon it. You say “good enough” at some point, and consider it done.

And so, an important lesson to remember is, let your first book be your first book. Don’t try to rewrite it, don’t try to “finish” it. Above all, don’t think you need to cling onto the idea you had. Plots don’t matter, remember.

To write a first book is to express an instance of affect in a given period of time. There will always be a new experience, a new motive to write.