How to do it

Every writer has a different approach to writing a book. This is mine. I spend some time planning, writing notes on characters, developing a vague idea of what will happen in each chapter. I plan on twenty chapter of about 5,000 words each. I know that I won't stick to that but it helps to have an overall idea of the shape of the book. Then I start writing and I write very fast and I don't allow myself to stop. The first 80,000 word draft of the book I'm currently working on took me two months to write and I wasn't even working very hard - only about four hours a day. Of course, that first draft was awful, really awful. It didn't even make sense. But I find that it helps to put it all down. Once I've done that I can see the shape of the book. After that I start re-writing, going through from beginning to end again and again and again. The last book took fourteen complete and thorough re-writes. Hopefully this one might be slightly less. The whole process will probably take about four years. I wish that it didn't take so long and the publishers would prefer that too. But one thing I've learnt in all this is that it isn't helpful to argue with the process. Every writer has their own individual process and you've just got to live with your process. Writing a book is so very hard that it doesn't matter at all how you do it. Just do whatever way you can. And if it takes you twenty years then that's how long it takes.