I used to think that authors who claimed to have written their novels in just a few weeks or within days were lying. There’s a podcaster I listen to whose book just came out. She has two young children, a thriving business, and travels constantly. She said she wrote her self-help book in under a month, writing most of it in a week to meet her publisher’s deadline. My initial thought was this… she’s got a ghostwriter. She’s just taking notes and outlining. She’s a businesswoman, an influencer. She’s not a real writer. She doesn’t understand or respect the book-writing process. What she’s saying is total BS.

But about a month ago, I did what I thought was the impossible. I wrote the first draft of my current novel in two weeks. I’m working on the second draft, which involves editing, fleshing out, and typing the scenes I’d written in notebooks into my laptop. I’m on track to finish this draft in under two months.

I’ve been writing for over twenty-five years. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. The experience has felt like lightning in a bottle…rare, magical, fluid, easy. It feels like the book is writing itself. There’s this sense that the ease is a one-shot deal. But does writing a book that writes itself have to be a once-in-a-lifetime event? Is the experience really that much of a unicorn? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

John Boyne wrote The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in 2 ½ days.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote The Gambler in 26 days.

William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in 6 weeks while working at a power plant

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 48 hours.

Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 9 days

Stephen King wrote The Running Man in 1 week

John Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness in 2 months

Sarah Gruen wrote Water for Elephants in 4 weeks

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 3 weeks

The above list suggests that writing a quality book quickly is perhaps not as uncommon as we writers think. Does it really take months or years to write a novel?

After analyzing my own experience, I’ve come to believe that there are some things (The writer’s writing habits, the writer’s emotional state, and specific elements of the novel) that must align for quick, easy writing to happen. I’ve broken these elements down. My hope is that if you apply these hacks created from them, your writing experience will be less arduous. Perhaps you will even write a book that writes itself in a matter of weeks or, dare I say, days.

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1. Writing a novel that writes itself is more likely if you’ve personally been in the same emotional headspace as your protagonist. Your experience doesn’t need to be identical, but the ideas will come more quickly if you don’t have to stop and wonder, “How will my protagonist react to this?” My second novel is about grief, more specifically, losing a daughter. I struggled to write the book until my mother passed. After her death, I was able to grasp the depths of my protagonist’s grief. Again, my experience wasn’t the same as my protagonist’s, but it was close enough.
2. Consider writing about a place that you are familiar with. That way, you won’t have to stop and do research and interrupt the flow of your story. I’m currently writing about Orange County, CA… where I live. I don’t have to fact-check. The setting details, which I couldn’t get from Googling or evening visiting So Cal, are what’s propelling the plot forward.
3. Write about a topic that you care strongly about … something you’re kind of obsessed with. My current novel is about a hit-and-run accident. I’m bizarrely obsessed with hit-and-runs. There are a lot of them in the LA area. Because of the warm climate, people are always out dog walking, jogging, skateboarding, and biking. There is also a lack of parking, so people park their cars on streets, leading to poor driving visibility.  People step out into the street and get hit all the time. CA is also prone to lawsuits, and because of this, drivers flee the scene. I’ve probably seen twenty hit-and-runs firsthand and have often wondered how I’d handle this awful situation if I were the driver. I follow hit-and-runs in the news. I’ve seen driver’s lives and futures destroyed in a single moment of distraction. You get the picture. I care and think about this topic. If you want to write a novel that writes itself, choose a topic that gets you not just a little excited but amped up, and energized and that you already know about.
4. Put your protagonist in an impossible situation where the path forward isn’t clear. His or her struggles will keep you writing.
5. Consider starting as close to the inciting incident as possible. A fast start in writing, just like in a running race, will give you confidence and momentum. Not only did I NOT do a lengthy intro by showing my protagonist in her everyday life pre-inciting incident in my current novel, I started the story after the inciting incident, her car accident. Just something to consider.
6. Think NaNoWriMo.  Write daily, at the same time, and give yourself a word or page count goals. The more consistently you write, the more your confidence will grow. With high confidence comes writing that flows.
7. If criticism impacts you, avoid showing your draft to your writing group until it’s finished. Protect your idea and your story. Easy writing will be your reward.
8. Make sure your writing skills are honed so the worry of fine-tuning your work isn’t hanging over you. If you’re confident in your abilities and skills, you won’t hold back when writing. This will lead to a draft that pours out of you.
9. Don’t stop and edit your first draft. Just keep going. Think flow. No interruptions.
10. Start writing only when you have a premise. I used to simply start writing and then write into my novel ideas. But in my current novel, an incident in my own life triggered my premise. I knew what I was going to write from the get-go. This was a game-changer for me. If you’re normally a pantster, consider going the plotter route or starting wiht a solid concrete idea.
11. Relax and trust your gut, and if you are feeling uninspired, attend a writing class or a conference. I recently participated in a conference. Not only did the classes invigorate me, but they also changed my perspective on how and why I wrote. Perhaps all you need is a perpective shift.
12. Know why your book matters and what your message is. I want society to see people who make mistakes as human. I want us to consider the complexities of tragedies and not just focus on blaming. When I don’t feel like working on my novel, I think about this goal. Knowing your reason for writing your book will lead to more consistent writing habits and increase the likelyhood that your book will write itself.

I hope the above list helps. If this topic resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you. How long does it normally take you to write a novel? Do you have any tips for writing novels that write themselves? What are your writing habits that lead to writing that flows out quickly? Thanks for reading! Keep writing!