I started writing the start of my sophomore year and I’m currently a senior. Been taking honors and AP classes and working a part time job. In those two years and a bit, I’ve written roughly 600k words - the equivalent of about six novels. Nothing publishable, just fanfiction, but it’s still writing that took time and effort to produce. Want to know the key to keeping that up?
Consistency. You have to prioritize writing above your other regular activities, whether that’s social media, TV, video games, friends, sleep, whatever, and you have to do it every day. For me that’s the time before I go to bed (my sleep schedule is worth sacrificing for writing). It has to be important enough to give up other enjoyable activities, to give them up every day.
Because you do very much have the hours to spend on it. It just depends on if you’re willing to give those hours up. An easy way to get started is just setting a timer for fifteen minutes and writing all you can in that time. If you do that consistently, then soon you’ll be writing for more than fifteen minutes and putting down a decent number of words.
Another thing to note is, as this is likely your first piece of writing, it probably won’t be very high quality. That takes years of consistent writing, or as I’ve read from Mercedes Lackey, a million words. My writing has gone through drastic changes since I started. Heck, I just polished a piece I wrote a year ago and I had no idea I used so many adverbs and so many of my sentences were in passive voice. So whatever you produce is more practice than anything, which is still an essential step to writing your novel.
If you really want to write this novel as a high schooler, learn how to prioritize to the point of consistent daily writing, which will set you on the path to producing quality content.
…although in my case, I also don’t have TikTok, Instagram or SnapChat or play video games, so I suppose that helped.
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