Have you always wanted to write a novel?

Emily Winslow will help you develop the mindset and skills to get you started, keep you going, and see you through. Time to Write is a creative writing guide aimed at anyone who wants to write a novel and could use some support.

It contains 49 lessons, each easy to read and packed with insights based on experience. Emily has taken her own work to high levels with major publishers, and has learned from teaching at Cambridge University what makes students light up and what makes their work drastically, excitingly improve.

This book is full of encouragement, recognizing and affirming different work styles. It’s a total handbook, teaching a broad range of specific writing skills with insight and clarity as well as covering topics around writing in-depth, such as how to give and take critique and how to evaluate publishers and agents.

It’s time to write the stories inside you.

FROM THE FIRST PAGE:

IN APRIL OF 2020, I was asked to appear as a guest on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. With lockdown in full swing, people were home, and many had time on their hands. The host wanted to tap into the positive message of “Now might be the time to write that novel!” She invited me as one of two novelists to give advice.

The other writer, a fellow crime novelist, had a message that emphasized planning and discipline. It clearly works well for her, and I hope that those who needed that nudge heard it joyfully. It’s certainly an appealing message that’s exciting to project into the future: if I write 500 words each day, I can finish my novel in six months! If I write 1000 words a day, I could be done in three months!

I had a very different suggestion: Rest. Daydream.

This is because there are lots of steps to writing a book, and writing is only one of them. Daydreaming, brainstorming, and what-iffing are parts of an essential foundation that counts as a form of progress. Mid-project stages of analyzing what you’ve already written, wrestling with plot problems, and imag- ining the consequences of various character actions can count as progress. Imagining your own success—what you hope re- viewers or prize-givers will one day say about your work—helps you crystallize what you’re trying to do. Stimulating your imagination with inspiring examples, and even getting some distance and perspective away from your project, can all be forms of progress.

Sadly, work that doesn’t involve a keyboard or pen often goes unrecognized. When people dismiss the value of non- writing forms of work, they often berate themselves, calling themselves lazy when they’ve failed to add to their wordcount. Then, commonly, shame makes them want to avoid the project and perpetuates the not-writing rather than jump-starting the writing they desire.

And when people dismiss the value of the non-writing forms of work, they can easily miss the gifts they contain. If daydreaming has been “doing nothing” then its fruits go unexamined and unused. Where is your imagination leading you? Pay attention! There are treasures there, and necessary rest.

By no means am I against self-discipline. It’s necessary too. There’s a part of every project—sometimes a large part— where inspiration isn’t enough, and progress can only be made by sheer will and an external deadline. But our culture is already steeped in that fact. In my experience as a teacher, student writers already know they need self-discipline, and they’re skilled at guilt and apology.

So, I encourage daydreaming! Not because daydreaming alone is enough, but because our culture is already skewed toward the necessary value of discipline. We need balance be- tween the two, and for most that means discovering the value of daydreaming with relief and gusto.