How to write your first novel – 4) are you a planner or a wanderer?

When I imagined myself writing my first novel, which would be on approximately four million occasions over the past twenty years, I always assumed I would be Planner. I envisaged myself having complex spreadsheets and flow charts defining narrative progression, character arcs and the complex relationships between plots, sub-plots and sub-sub plots. In my head not a word of prose or dialogue would be written until I fully understood how this book would start and finish, and had mapped out the path the story would take between the two.

This assumption was founded on the basis that I’m a really organised person. Professionally I work as a marketing strategist, which means I obsess about objectives and the best routes you can take to achieve them. I organise my thoughts by mentally putting things in boxes, which can be shuffled around or stacked, opened or closed, emptied or filled or nestled inside bigger boxes like Russian dolls. I make lot of lists and create an extensive and detailed spreadsheet every Christmas. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s how I get shit done.

But as it turns out, ‘plan and organise’ isn’t how I write books at all. I went into Book One with a clear idea of how it started, and a vague idea of how it would end. The 90,000 words in between were a complete unknown until I actually started to write, and then paragraph by paragraph the way became clear.

The easiest way I can describe it is like being in the woods in the dark, able to see a faint glow in the distance that you need to reach. As you walk through the trees, a few lights illuminate the path, just a handful of steps at a time. I just keep writing until the next few lights appear, then follow that path until more and more of the route is lit and the destination is getting closer. I’m learning to recognise when I’ve taken a wrong turn, and when I’m definitely going in the right direction and can up my pace a little.

So I guess the point is there is no hard and fast approach to planning – for some people it’s essential to feel in control, for others it’s a wandering path of gut instinct and blind faith. I never expected to be in the latter category, but here we are.  If you do something completely different, I’d love to know about it!