Ever since I first made the decision to actually start working on writing my fantasy novel it has kind of been this secret project that no-one else has known about. Aside from telling the world semi-anonymously on here, I’ve not told a single family member or friend what I was planning on doing.

A part of me was really worried that people would laugh and think it impossible for me to do such a thing. “You’re going to do what!?” has frequently played through my mind, and so for the last few weeks it’s just been my little secret.

I really shouldn’t have worried.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to probably over a hundred podcast episodes on creative writing, have outlined a number of my main characters, the plot and summarised some initial chapters. That finally gave me the confidence to actually tell someone what I was doing this week and the response was nothing but supportive.

In fact, it was really positive. Those I told already knew others that had written books, or were in the process of doing so. One had actually not long published their first book, whilst the other had already secured a publishing deal. Admittedly not in my genre, but it has really normalised writing for me and given me that extra boost to continue mapping out the outline for my own story. Those conversations have also helped to bounce thoughts off of other people to reinforce and bring some new ideas as to how I might approach my novel.

One of those was simply to ‘Just write it’. Now I know I’m the sort of author that will need to logically plan out my book, but I really loved the simplicity of this advice. It really came of a place of not quelling that creativity and so I think I might actually start writing properly at the same time as outlining soon just to see what happens.

I’ve actually already written a kind of detailed summary which I hope will form the basis of my final confrontation chapter where I want the story to end up, and strangely I think that will most likely be the first chapter I write in full despite it coming very near the end of the book. With that in mind I’m now working on an outline for how I plan for the story to get the characters there throughout the rest of the book.

So if you’re out there sitting on the idea of writing a novel, I highly recommend you don’t keep it completely to yourself. Tell a select few people to begin with and see where it gets you; you might find it more helpful than you think.