17 Things Only People Who Have Tried To Write A Novel Will Know

14. Food. ALL THE FOOD

Trying to write a novel is stress-inducing, so if you're not stress cleaning, you're stress eating. You either eat the worst kinds of food available to you, or you decide to become a Master Chef and insist on cooking only gourmet meals for yourself that take a good hour or so to prepare. Because doing so means you've got a legit reason for not writing your book.

13. Alcohol. ALL THE ALCOHOL

As Ernest Hemingway, and occasionally Mark Twain, have been attributed with saying: "Write drunk, edit sober." Writers are notorious for their drinking habits, since most of them seem to claim that it fuels the soul. Every writer who's attempted to write a novel has tried to, at least once, write a chapter or two while under the influence of the sacred alcohol juice. It rarely pays off.

12. Coffee Is Your New Best Friend

Coffee runs at 3am are the norm for wannabe novelists. When trying to write a novel that makes sense, you'll realise that - while a nice alcohol-induced buzz can sometimes get the juices flowing - too much alcohol means that most of what you write it will come out as complete and utter gibberish. Coffee is the essential tool for keeping you in a state of awakeness, for good or for worse.

11. Your Forget What It Feels Like To Sleep Properly

Sleep sometimes feels like a foreign concept, either because you've had too much coffee or your ideas are finally flowing and all the procrastination has subsided. Nevertheless, people trying to write a novel know that in order to get things done, some incredibly important things must be sacrificed. Sleep is one of them, which is always just about the saddest thing to have ever happened, ever.