I started writing in January.

[CrispyQ]

I pounded out five chapters, about 25,000 words and then came to a screeching halt. A panster I'm not. My story started about two months earlier than it should have. So I backed up all those words to my flash drive & bought some index cards. I sketched out some scenes, new ones (!), & got a better grip on my plot. Yesterday I pounded out a new Chapter 1 that is so much better I cannot believe it!

I feel good!

Today, Chapter 2.


I found this very inspiring:

Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.

– Joshua Wolf Shenk