25/06/2020 - Planning vs Writing

When I started writing what would (eventually) become my first book, I didn’t know what I was doing. I opened a blank word document and started typing. What I ended up writing was a 54,000 word mess which started with a teleporter accident and ended with humanity ascending to a new plane of existence. I had no real plan. I didn’t have any character arcs in mind. I just started writing. I started my second book in much the same way. And my third.

It wasn’t long before I started noticing the problems this approach was causing. Tentatively, I started planning my novels out. The first time I did this, I realised a problem with my story immediately. I saved myself countless hours by scrapping that story outline and starting again. Since then I’ve found myself planning more and more and more. These days I rarely start any project without a full plot outline, character biographies and a full portfolio of inspiring artwork.

That being said, I am a very ill person. My health prevents me from holding down a job with fixed hours (I.E. almost all of them) and it has left my concentration in tatters. This means planning a novel is very hard for me at the moment. Over the past month, I really wanted to start writing a project about spies and redemption. It’s a very complex project. I wouldn’t be comfortable starting it without fully planning things out first and, sadly, planning is something that’s just a bit too abstract for my brain to deal with at the moment.

So, instead, I’ve gone back to an old project I abandoned two years ago. It wouldn’t be what I spent my time writing in an ideal world but if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t live in an ideal world. What this project is is fully planned out. To my surprise, I have been finding coming back to this long-abandoned project hugely enjoyable. I can’t even remember why I abandoned it in the first place, but it was probably something to do with depression.