I Wrote a Novel at Ten. Here’s What Adults Get Wrong

Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash

I wrote my first novel at ten years old.

Not a short story. Not a few scattered chapters. A full handwritten draft on wide-ruled loose-leaf paper.

Here’s the paradox.

I knew nothing about story structure. Nothing about pacing. Nothing about publishing. And that ignorance helped me finish.

Years later, when I knew more, I struggled more.

So what changed?

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The Two Ingredients I Didn’t Know I Had

At the most basic level, writing a novel requires two things:

1) Relentless output

2) Relentless input

Write constantly.

Read constantly.

That’s it.

At ten, I did both without overthinking either.

A whole world appeared in my mind. I became obsessed with it. I drew maps. I invented currency. I acted as the central bank of my house and paid my brothers for good behavior. If they wanted something from me, they paid up.

I lived inside that world.

And then I wrote it down.

There was no strategy. No brand positioning. No thought about audience. No anxiety about whether it was good. There was only momentum.

The Child Advantage

Children possess three unfair advantages:

• Directness

• Honesty

• Speed of learning

I read anything I could get my hands on. Almanacs. Encyclopedias. Textbooks. Fiction. Nonfiction. It did not matter.

I absorbed information all day.

Then I wrote.

There was no tracking of word count. No productivity system. No guilt about time lost.

Writing was not a performance. It was play.

When I went outside, my friends and I invented adventures. Those experiences flowed straight back into the manuscript.

Input became output.
Life became story.

The loop stayed unbroken.

Where the Loop Breaks

As I got older, something shifted.

The words slowed. I became aware of craft. Aware of criticism. Aware of the world.

Awareness turned into hesitation.

Writer’s block followed.

My days were filled with work, Netflix, long conversations, and habits that dulled ambition rather than sharpened it.

I blamed time. I blamed pressure. I blamed everything external. But the real issue was internal.

The loop was broken.

I was consuming less intentionally. Writing less consistently. Judging more harshly.

The child wrote first and evaluated later.

The adult evaluated first and never wrote.

That is the trap.

The Real Two Ingredients

Years later, after finishing another draft nearly a decade after the first, I finally understood what those two ingredients truly were.

Not talent.
Not discipline.

Connection and repetition.

Connection to the version of you who creates without fear.

Repetition in reading and writing until output becomes automatic.

Here is the formula, stripped down:

1) Write as if no one will ever read it.

Write as if your survival depends on it. Write in stolen moments. Write before you feel ready.

If you are unwilling to give up small comforts for your work, you are operating at half effort. Half effort produces half results.

A fifty percent in school is failure. So why do we accept it in our art?

2) Read far outside your comfort zone. Do not stay inside your favorite genre.

Read what challenges you. Read what confuses you. Read what you think you will dislike.

Breadth expands your thinking. Narrow input creates narrow output.

If you want deeper writing, widen your reading.

Tools Do Not Replace Dailiness

Writing is simple.

Not easy. Simple.

If you want to write a novel, you must write. If you want to write better, you must read.

There is no shortcut around this.

Riding a bike requires repetition. Learning piano requires repetition. Writing requires repetition.

The paradox is that we complicate what is structurally simple. We search for systems when we need consistency. We search for inspiration when we need a sense of dailiness.

Reconnect the Loop

You do not need to become a child again.

You need to restore the loop.

Input.

Output.

Play.

Iteration.

Consume widely.

Produce relentlessly.

Judge later.

That is how a ten-year-old finishes a novel. And that is how you will finish yours.

Now write something. Not perfectly. Not publicly.

Just write.

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