Ever since I decided to write a book I always thought that outlining would give me the best chance of writing something brilliant and really getting my story across, but in some ways it has also led me to put off actually start writing.

For me the outlining is safe; it’s creative, but it doesn’t involve actually putting words on a page that can actually be judged which feels rather scary.

I really appreciated the advice a friend gave me however. They said ‘just start writing’, and I love the simplicity of this, as in reality that’s all I really needed to do. And whilst I have got a fair amount of the book outlined, I decided that I also needed to do exactly that and finally just start writing.

It’s been an interesting start. The writing itself is actually a LOT harder than I thought it would be. I’m starting to understand what a lot of writers mean when they talk about their process being very important. At times I will agonize over a sentence for ages, whilst others come with relative ease.

Little and often certainly seems like a good way forwards. So far I’ll write a few paragraphs, and then I’ll get a bit stuck and spend ages trying to work out what comes next, when actually the best thing to do seems to be put it away, and then come back to it the next day. Inevitably then I end up correcting the last bit of what I wrote the day before, and then adding a little more to it.

I don’t know if it’s normal, but I started out writing one of my very last chapters first. The main final confrontation chapter. It seemed the most logical place to start, as it is the point that is most clear in my head. However given my lack of experience in writing, it also feels like one of the most difficult chapters to write, and whilst I made some progress it didn’t quite feel right so I decided to leave it and come back to it.

Working on that bit gave me some other ideas, and I flipped back to starting on my prologue and that’s where I’ve had the most success.

So far I’m finding writing description to be the hardest part, but equally I’m trying not to worry about it too much, as I know there’ll be loads that I’ll end up learning on this first write through of the book and that there’ll be plenty to fix later on anyway.

Despite all the outlining, taking the ‘pants’ approach at times has really brought out some nice ideas and going forward I think I will probably do a mix of both outlining and just writing to see where the story goes.

My first milestone is complete at the very least – over 1,000 words and counting – here’s to the next 1,000!