Sometimes writing goes fast, like all you have to do is let it flow out. Sometimes it’s slower than that.
This chapter is a pivotal point in the relationship of the two brothers so . . . I need to make it right. Of course, it doesn’t have to be perfect–yet. This is still the first draft. But sometimes, especially on the pivotal chapters, I have trouble reminding myself of that. And, the revisions really are much easier if at least the right bones are in place to begin with.
Between some new ideas, which I think will make the chapter much better, and some annoying real life distractions, this chapter is taking its time making it onto the page. Sometimes, I just have to go with that.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 
It’s easy to sit down and churn out five thousand words at a sitting. The problem is getting 5000 words that do what you need to get done! If it were that easy you could have a novel done in two weeks. In fact some people who’ve set themselves up as writing gurus like DWS advocate writing just that way.
But when in doubt you get more done by writing something than writing nothing, even if you have to throw that something away (which would horrify DWS).
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LOL.
Every writer’s process is different. There is no one-size-fits-all. And I am definitely not DWS.
Fastest I’ve ever done a first draft was about six weeks. Slowest was about a year. It takes as long as it takes.
Revising to add more of the setting or more emotion, etc., is easy. Revising a major plot point is not. So I don’t mind if those take a little more time.
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It’s funny how it feels hard to revise a plot point. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I think it’s because the need to know “why” makes you confront things in your characterization that you haven’t fully worked out yet.
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Or, sometimes, because so much that follows would also have to be changed.
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True enough, but only some stories are like clockworks — really hard to change just one piece without throwing the entire gear train off — and other ones are chains of complications that can be shortened or lengthened as needed. Sometimes in super-twisty plotting the characters just zig and zag from page to page, and the resolution of any one complication hardly matters.. That’s not my kind of story, but some popular works fit that mold..
I prefer the story where the last page is like putting the last piece into the jigsaw puzzle, and that takes lots of planning. Sometimes you have to lay the plot out twice, once from the protagonist standpoint and once from the antagonist’s, even if that second viewpoint is only inferred by the reader. Then every plot change turns out to be two changes to manage!
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Well, I’m not a plotter. But I do try to at least know the main plot points the story should be aiming for. Not that the characters don’t occasionally hijack the train and take it someplace else entirely. It has happened once or twice.
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