life of a writer

5 Things I’ve Learned Writing My First Novel

/ Author Simon Phillips / Leave a comment

When I first sat down to write The Veil of Kings and Gods, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. Turns out, I didn’t. Not entirely. What started as a story I’d been carrying around for years quickly became something bigger, more demanding, and surprisingly personal.

So here are five honest things I’ve learned while writing my first novel. No fluff, no glory, just the raw truths behind the word count.

1. Writing a novel is 20% writing, 80% rewriting

When people talk about “finishing a book,” what they usually mean is “finishing a first draft.” The actual writing is just the beginning. What follows is a long dance of trimming, reshaping, rewriting, and wondering what on earth you were thinking when you named a city “Flarnrath.”

Most of my real progress has come in the second draft, when characters became real, scenes started breathing, and I finally admitted that yes, that one chapter was absolute rubbish and needed to go.

2. Plot holes are sneaky little things

You can outline. You can plan. You can spend hours naming every town and hill. But I promise you, by Chapter 20, a plot hole you never saw coming will sneak up behind you like a fantasy tax collector.

Sometimes it’s a missing motivation. Sometimes a character forgets something they knew two chapters ago. Sometimes your own world’s logic turns on you. And that’s okay. Spotting the flaws means you’re actually building something worth fixing.

3. Characters have a mind of their own

This one still baffles me.

You give a character a role, supportive friend, rival noble, doomed warrior and before you know it, they’re wandering off-script, falling in love with the wrong person, or refusing to die when they’re supposed to.

It’s frustrating and brilliant. Because when a character surprises you, they’re starting to feel real. That’s when the story stops being yours alone and starts becoming something living on the page.

4. Worldbuilding is addictive (and dangerous)

Creating maps, lore, languages, timelines, ancient conflicts, it’s endlessly fun. But it can also become a brilliant excuse to avoid actual writing.

I’ve spent entire evenings designing a river system no one will probably ever look at, just to avoid a tough scene. It’s a delicate balance: build the world deep enough to feel real, but not so deep you never come up for air.

5. Progress isn’t linear, but momentum is everything

Some weeks I write two thousand words a day. Other weeks I barely manage two hundred. And that’s alright. It doesn’t mean I’m failing. It just means I’m human.

The trick is to keep showing up, to keep the story alive in your head and your heart, even when life pulls you in five different directions. Momentum builds when you stay close to the work, even if it’s just scribbling a line on your phone while riding the train.

Final Thoughts

Writing this novel has been one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done. It’s taught me patience, discipline, and the strange kind of joy that comes from creating something nobody else can quite see, yet.

If you’re writing something of your own, or just thinking about it, I hope this little list reminds you that the struggle is part of the journey. And that you’re not alone in it.

Feel free to drop a comment below or subscribe to the blog if you’d like updates on my novel progress, lore posts, or random ramblings from the author cave.

See you in the next post.

The Line We Rewrite: Why Writers Chase the Truth

/ Author Simon Phillips / Leave a comment

There’s a strange ritual writers go through, quietly, without fanfare. You’ll see us hunched over the same sentence, again and again. A dozen drafts. A dozen moods. One line that just won’t settle.

It’s not about being perfect.

Perfection is cold, clinical. What we’re chasing is something messier. Something truer.

Some days, I’ll write a paragraph and immediately feel it’s wrong. Not because the grammar’s off or the pacing is clumsy, but because it’s lying. Not in a factual way, but in tone, in the shape of the feeling. The line says what happened, but it doesn’t yet say what it meant.

And that’s what rewriting really is: not a polish, but a search.

A search for the shape of truth in fiction.

Writing, at its best, is honest. Even in fantasy, especially in fantasy, we owe the reader something sincere. We build our worlds out of dragons and dead empires, but the emotions are still borrowed from real life. A moment of doubt. A breath held too long. A wound that didn’t heal right.

That’s why we rewrite the same line. That’s why we stare at it in silence. We’re not trying to make it pretty. We’re trying to make it real.

The truth in writing rarely arrives in the first draft. It’s a whisper that grows louder the more you listen. And sometimes, all you can do is sit there, head in hands, blinking at the screen and try again.

One more version. One more breath.

Until the words finally stop pretending.

And the line, at last, becomes itself.

The village doesn’t exist yet but I know it’s there

/ Author Simon Phillips / Leave a comment

It’s just past midnight.

A candle flickers beside me, catching the curl of parchment and the edge of an old teacup. I’m staring at a map no one’s ever seen. A blank patch of woodland sits untouched waiting. Not for a battle or a prophecy. Just a name.

Thronheim. Thornwynde. Djenhara.

Each one arrives with a different weight. A different feeling. As though I’ve stepped into a new season, a different wind stirring the trees. I try one, then another, letting the sound of it sit on the tongue.

Naming a place in a fantasy world isn’t just about the sound. It’s about the history you haven’t written yet. The lives you haven’t met. A name carries the mood of the land, its sorrow, its strength, its story.

And some nights, I can’t move forward until I find the one that fits.

Naming places is like uncovering them

Sometimes it feels less like creating and more like discovering. The name already exists somewhere, I’m just trying to hear it clearly. It might come from a half-remembered dream or an echo of another language. Often it arrives when I’m nowhere near the desk. Walking. Waiting. Listening.

Other times, I sit like this. Quiet. Focused. Letting the world grow through the stillness.

The right name shapes the path ahead. It tells me what kind of people might live there. What kind of secrets the soil might keep. A name like Sahmirra might belong to a place scarred by fire. Solvryn whispers of hidden things in the marsh.

And once I hear it, the true one, I know where to go next.

Behind the scenes of a quiet worldbuilder

This is what fantasy writing really looks like most days. Not sweeping battles or lightning storms of inspiration. Just quiet choices, made in the dark, that slowly build a world.

You don’t always need to rush. Some villages take longer to appear. Some names wait until you’re ready to find them.

If you’d like to see more of how I write these stories, how the world of Ældorra unfolds through maps, short stories, and strange midnight moments, you’re always welcome here.

Inside the Life of an Aspiring Author

/ Author Simon Phillips / Leave a comment

Most people imagine authors as curled up in quiet rooms, sipping tea and watching the words pour effortlessly onto the page. A kind of literary tranquillity, wrapped in books and warmed by candlelight.

I wish that were true.

The reality, at least for me, is far from romantic. It’s writing between real-life responsibilities, when the house is quiet and the world finally pauses. I’ve made a decision to pursue this dream fully, working extra hours not because I love the grind, but because that income, after family needs, goes straight into editing, proofreading, and eventually publishing. I’m investing in my own story, one sacrifice at a time.

My day is a patchwork of obligations. I run a small English school in Japan, manage creative routines around work and home life, and still find time to draw maps, script lore videos, and edit chapters that feel like they’ll never end. I’m not yet published. I’m not famous. But I’m building something, page by page, post by post.

There’s a mental weight to this work that few talk about. Some days, I stare at a sentence for an hour, unsure if it even belongs. Other days, it all flows so quickly I can barely keep up. The emotional shifts are real, self-doubt, exhaustion, the nagging feeling that I should be doing something more “practical.” But then a scene clicks. A piece of world-building locks into place. And for a moment, it feels like magic again.

So why do I keep going?

Because I believe in the stories I’m telling. The Veil of Kings and Gods is more than a novel, it’s a world I’ve carried for years. The short stories of Ældorra let me explore lost myths and haunted corners I’ve only glimpsed in dreams. And my sci-fi series, still in early development, pushes me to imagine a future I can barely articulate.

I don’t know when success will come, or even what it’ll look like when it does. But I know this: I want to create worlds that feel real, dangerous, and beautiful. Worlds where characters fight for something, where gods whisper from beyond, and where the weight of time never fully lifts.