If you go wrong in a novel, you can straighten it out in the next chapter. You don't have any room to do that in a novella.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters.
Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.
My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.
I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions.
If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.
I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.
I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.
Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.