What does being a novelist mean? A - K Guide

This post is a couple of months old but I figured maybe now is a good time to revisit it again seeing as how I have entered the role of editing, editing and yes you've guessed it editing!

As I am now 100% through writing a novel, albeit a first draft, I got to thinking about what being a novelist could mean.

Could it mean someone who has been published, someone who has achieved acclaim and recognition for being able to write a story long enough to fill 300 plus pages which people want to spend their well earned money on?  You having created a fictional world for another person's pleasure?

It sounds good, in fact it would be almost perfect except for a few things.  Firstly no one writes primarily for another person's pleasure, it is solely because they want to write, and I have heard it is also because some people don't feel they have any choice but to write.  Mad but true certainly in my case.  Secondly, the fact that a novel is published should not discriminate against all the novels of merit which have been created but for whom publication for whatever number of reasons did not happen.  And thirdly, and by far the most important reason, it is because after spending nearly five months of writing my little socks off (all 120 of them) and spending more time with my fictional characters than my friends and family, it has to be a description that I can now use having finished the blasted thing even if it is only first draft!

So I got to defining what I think being a novelist really means.

A. It means you are someone who is capable of living in a parallel universe of your own starting with a single letter on a page and ending up with around 100,000 words.

B. It means you are someone who is prepared to write even when it is the last thing you want to do.

C. It means you are someone who despite asking yourself the question, 'is this all worth it?' you keep writing anyway.

D. That you stop being afraid that whatever you create isn't worthwhile and concentrate on just doing it.

E. That you create characters which you believe in to the extent that you spend hours working out what they are thinking.

F. That you ignore the fact that the possibility of being published is so remote that it is never going to happen to you.

G. That you invest an amazing amount of time in something that once it is finished and edited to the equivalent of a size 14 becoming a size 'zero', that it will more than likely be rejected by many, including all the publishers you send it away to.

H. That in the event you surpass the extreme odds against being published, that you will probably never make enough money to live on your own income, unless of course you enter the 'one in a million lottery type zone,' like JK Rowling or the like.

I. And that despite everything you are prepared to cross that line of 'your dream becoming a reality', by finishing the thing and not languish in the surreal wonderful bliss, of planning to do it someday!

J. And more importantly that at the end of writing the first draft of a novel you can call yourself a novelist become you have done it,

Irrespective of anyone wanting to publish it

Irrespective of anyone wanting to read it

Irrespective of it being a work of literary genius
& finally because,

K. You have been capable of fighting off all the doubts, fears, boredom, laziness and general excuses for not doing it, and have a 400 page yoke by, yes you guessed it, a 'NOVELIST.'

It's official, I am now completely nuts!

  But then again so are most of my best friends!