“Novel Advice” by Kevin T. Johns

Writing a novel is hard work. I’ve written two, and I’m working on a third, and all three have been hard work. Novels are work while you’re thinking about them, work while you’re writing them, and work to publish and market them.

Practical advice for writing, and writing a novel, is always welcome. You can learn a lot from what other writers have done, even if their experience won’t be an exact match for your own experience. Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Writers by Kevin T. Johns is exactly that – practical advice for how to get and stay motivated, how and where to look for inspiration, and tips for the writing process itself.

Kevin Johns is a writing coach, ghostwriter, and host of The Writing Coach podcast. Among other works, he’s written three novels. In Novel Advice, he’s assembled a series of articles based on his blog postings, and virtually all of the articles are an answer to a question posed by one of his writing clients.

Are you focused on creating a perfect book, one that will be celebrated as high art? Forget it, says Johns. Are you too old to become a writer? No. Should you follow all the writing rules? No; no author does that. What’s the right length for a novel? Yes, as long as it’s not 900 pages (except for the one that was). How do you beef up a lean manuscript with material that isn’t padding? Johns has eight ways to do that.

Kevin T. Johns

Johns is the author of three novels, The Page Turners (2013), The Page Turners: Economy of Fear (2015), and M School (2016), and two other instructional writing books, The Novel Writer’s Blueprint: Five Steps to Creating and Completing Your First Book (2014) and Smash Fear and Write Like a Pro (2016). He’s also written a children’s book, Rocket Princess vs. Snaggletooth the Dragon (2015). He and his family live in Ottawa, Canada.

Novel Advice is simple, straightforward, and common sense. If you’re considering writing a novel, or even if you written and published one, this is a book full of practical wisdom.

Top photograph by Lou Levit via Unsplash. Used with permission.