Starting is hard.
There is a moment at the beginning of every new book where I open up my laptop, pull up a fresh document, and stare at the blank screen and blinking cursor and wonder, “How on earth do I write a book?” The enormity of the project is so vast, and the deadline seems so far away that the idea of actually successfully writing an entire manuscript’s first draft feels somehow impossible. Yet I have done this more than a dozen times before. I know by now that the most important thing when starting a book is to simply…start.
Last week, I began to work on book #3 of my Evelyne Redfern historical mystery series. I have already pitched the book but a page-long pitch does not a plot outline make, and so I opened up Notion (where I do all of my plotting, character sketches, etc.) and got to work.
For me, the early stages of writing a book bear no relationship to what readers will eventually read on the page. Instead, I focus on what I call “Prep.” This looks slightly different for each book I write (it’s partially driven by the needs of the genre I’m working in), but essentially what I am trying to do is build myself a structure to write my first draft around.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to With Love from London to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.