It's A Process

It’s a process.

After years of talking about it, writing about writing about it, procrastinating and retreating from baby steps taken, I finally began the chapter-to-chapter work of manifesting my manuscript. I started November 1st, from scratch. I completed 50,000+ words by November 30th. My second NaNoWriMo win. (The prize is personal satisfaction. No money.)

For so long I just wanted to write it, beginning to end. I didn’t get to the end. There’s so much story left to tell, it’s just getting juicy. I can begin to see two distinct books arise and which will be first.

The best part of getting so far along in my writing is discovering my process for completing it to publication. Whew! That’s huge. Now that I have the complete story, I can outline the drama. It's totally backwards from what I expected. Write the story first, then outline. From the outline, I’ll be able to rearrange the scenes logically. I forget how planned and logical I am. I may be an “artist”, but I am so so logical.

Once the scenes are logically arranged, then go back and work up the details scene-by-scene. Most likely, sticking to the to the flow of the subplots for consistency.

Then finesse the writing.

Isn’t that funny. Opposite of my intuitive ideas. Worry about the quality of each sentence absolutely last.

A plan. Somebody probably wrote a book about this. Probably a great how-to. Some of us like to believe we invented the idea of sweet with peanut butter. Sure, someone else came up with the peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, but this is organic peanut spread with pomegranate-infused strawberry jam. This is the MasterRabin step-by-step guide to manifesting a novel.