Watch fifty YouTube videos on how to write a novel and you’ll have learned how to write fifty dull, generic, and predictable novels.

During some of the many slumps in confidence about this thing I’m creating that’s completely taken over me, I tried to pick myself up by watching videos on how to write novels. None of the advice made any sense in relation to what I’m writing.

At first I thought that was because I’m not capable of pulling it off, that I’m unable to order my thoughts in such a way as to hybridise magic realism, dystopia, conspiracy, and folklore into a single autobiographical work that I’m actively living as well as writing.

When I’d pulled myself from the clichéd depths of writerly despair, I realised none of the advice even made sense in relation to the novels I enjoy reading, never mind the one I’m writing.

And so again and again I was motivated by the motivators, just not in the way they intended. My motivation was the realisation that there are as many ways to write a novel as there are novels to be written. Unless your aim is to create a page-turning piece of genre fiction – nothing wrong with that, if it’s what you want – the only way to write a novel is the way in which you’ll write the novel you attempt to write. If you write another, you’ll likely do it differently.

One thing for which I’m truly thankful is that while I’ve definitely doubted myself, not once have I doubted the idea. Last night I was almost moved to tears, visualising the day when I walk into my old university, give a copy to my creative writing tutor and say, “I’ve brought you something to mark”. That vision will carry me through this, as will belief and hard work.

Jesus, it has to! Obsessing over this thing has carried tremendous cost to my mental and social health. It will be worth it because it has to be, and there is no force stronger than the deep, unflinching belief that you’re doing something good.

To anyone writing or thinking of writing a novel: Do it. If you think you have a unique idea, that your voice and your thoughts could add something meaningful to this shitty human condition, you’re fucking us all over by not doing it.

If you’ve created characters in your head and you just leave them in there, they’ll become tulpas and turn against you; believe me, it happens. If you’ve watched fifty YouTube videos on how to write a novel and none of them make sense in relation to your idea, maybe you’re at the start of a new literary pathway.

Or maybe it’ll suck and none of it will make sense to anyone but you, but fuck it, at least you’ll have created something, and there’s nothing more life-affirming than that.