This past week while I was prospecting for new clients I had to consider how I write. Many writers identify themselves as heavy planners or free spirit writers who just take a snippet of an underdeveloped idea and either weave it into a full-length novel or scribble out a mass amount of words before having to go back and shape it into the finished work.

I’ve found that I can write either way. Mismatched was definitely an idea that I just ran with. I didn’t outline it ahead of time. I didn’t do character sketches. I just knew the basic plot and I knew where I wanted the characters to end up. I had even wrote the sex scenes separately and kept them off to the side, having written the entire novel without them. Of course I had an idea where they would go and I inserted them after editing them separately. (Although one scene was written during the editing stage after the novel was sold.)

In this next work in progress tentatively titled Early Withdrawal, I’ve mapped it out to the letter. I had the synopsis and book blurb written before I had even written a single page of the novel. Of course both have changed as I write the book, but I know every detail. It’s too early for me to say which method I like best, but I find myself starting and stopping because I have it so well planned out. During Mismatched my writing fits and droughts occurred due to lack of confidence and my lack of planning on how the novel would meet its end. Don’t think you stay confident just because you get published. You learn so much after getting published but self-doubt is there throughout a writer’s career, because each novel is new.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with how you write. Being too rigid takes some of the fun out of crafting your work and may cause you to miss a great new method that may surge your entire process.

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