A slow week and a writing epiphany

You know those slow weeks where life just continues on and nothing really interesting happens? Well, I had a couple of those in a row. So with nothing interesting happening, I decided not to bore you to tears with the inane details of my non-existent life.

Then I went on leave, and I thought: "Maybe I'll blog." BAd idea, I sat staring at th screen trying to find inspiration for a blog post and gave up. Now that I'm back from leave, I actually have stuff to say. Well, not really, but I thought I'd update you guys in anycase.

The writing wasn't going too well. I wrote a total of 3000 words for the first part of September, which is way too little in my opinion. Then I eralised what I was doing wrong, and my approach to writing changed.

I had this epiphany on Sunday: I was approaching my novel the wrong way, I had no clear direction, just a vague idea of beginning, middle and end. The process in between was pretty much an exercise in discovery writing. But this epiphany wasn't entirely life changing, not yet in any way.

On Monday I started plotting the "in between" bits, and I realised that I was glad that I waited this long to do it. Most of my plot ideas came from thoughts I had while "discovering" my novel in the first 25k words of the novel, they only had to be refined. I plotted up to the halfway mark, and the plotting made me so excited that I stopped right there and started writing again.

And this is where I realised how I wrote. You see, since this is my first novel I had no idea how I would approach writing. I've always been the "set-a-goal-and-get-there-by-any-means-possible" kind of guy, so I jumped in and started writing.

So when the next book comes around I will do the same. I will start off and write the story to get familiar with the characters and the world. As their stories take shape in my head, I will sit down and plot the rest of the novel out.

I cannot garuantee that this will work for anyone other than myself, and I cannot garuantee that my characters won't surprise me along the way, but this is my plan and I'm sticking to it.

Happy writing,

Lood