“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put on word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” – Neil Gaiman

There are many ways to plan and develop a novel, and it’s up to you as a writer to figure out what works best for you. As much as it pains me to say it, the less planning I give to a novel before I start to write it, the better the novel turns out. This is because my writing style only allows me to write out a story if I only have a vague sense of where I’m going because most of the fun of writing for me is discovering where I’m going along the way. If I know all the little details before I start writing and there are no secrets for me to uncover, it just feels like a chore, and that’s when the writer’s block creeps in.

Okay, so I just put words down on the page, one after another, but what do I do after the first draft is completed?

To put it frankly, the real work begins as I am now tasked with extreme revisions and even rewrites to fix the copious amount of errors in my first draft. But the difference is that I have the entire story written out and have a firm understanding of my characters and setting. If I tried to plan it all out first, the first draft would never get finished because my motivation to put words down on paper would be lost.

At this point, I am working on the first book in a trilogy and after going through and revising many scenes and even rewriting entire chapters, I decided to switch the POV from first-person to third-person, which I am only a couple chapters into at this point. Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling to start the second book because I wanted to have my shit together before writing it so I didn’t have to do all this work after finishing it, like I’m doing with book one.

Three months went by from finishing book one to starting book two, and I have four false-starts to that book because I was trying to get it juuuuust right, instead of just letting myself do my thing. Then, this weekend, I decided to just write what I wanted to right and trust myself to fix it in the revision-stage, and suddenly I was able to write 5,000 words and have my second book exactly where I wanted it to follow the first one. So as much work as revising and rewriting an entire book is, I have finally accepted that this is my writing style, which will now allow me to get more writing done.

It’s important for us as writers to reflect on what works and doesn’t work for us and our craft, and not try to force ourselves to do things a certain way because it seems better. Listen to your heart and mind, and if something doesn’t feel right, figure out why. It could either be that you believe that you’re doing it wrong or you’re going against what is the right fit for you. This sort of thing takes time, so just be patient with yourself.