First, I don’t wait until my outline is finished and locked up to start writing. Lots of ideas come while I’m writing, and I feel it’s important to give myself some leeway regarding the different events that will take place in the story. 

The most crucial part is to keep the outline up-to-date with the additional plot points to be sure to get back to them later in the story.

Where to start

Even if it’s the most popular way, I don’t think you need to start writing a story at the beginning (unless you plan to start posting before you’ve finished writing it, of course). Sometimes, there is a scene that I just want to get out of my system but that is not the beginning of the story, so I start by writing it.

For example, in The Person I Used To Be, the first scene I wrote is the one when the characters smoke a cigarette together on the patio. I had an idea for this scene even before I started planning the story, and it defined the mood for the whole story.

An important thing to stay aware of is that if I start by writing something that isn’t at the start of the story, chances are I’ll have to edit it a lot later to make it fit well with the rest.

Be regular

If there is one thing that I took out from the NaNoWriMo Camp this summer, it’s this. Nobody is going to write this story for me, and if I want to finish it, I have to write the words.

During the NaNo camp, I wrote every day of the month. Some days I was really tired from work and could only write 300 words. Some other days (especially during the weekends) I realized I had written 8000 words at the end of the day.

And it paid. At the end of July, I had finished writing a 67k words fanfiction (that I’ll start posting soon!). 

Now, I don’t think that it’s healthy to write at this speed all year long. It gets tiring, and I definitely feel the consequences of writing an average of 2100 words every day for the whole month.

We need to be gentle with ourselves, take care of our bodies, and remember that to get inspired we need to do other things than writing at some point! 

Writing the story

Sometimes, I want to write, but I don’t know where to start. This is just my way of doing it, and I’m sure there are millions of other ways that are just as good.

I always start a chapter by going back to the outline and copy everything in my writing document. I rearrange the main things that need to happen in this chapter, then I start working on a detailed chapter outline.

The chapter outline is a very important part for me because it allows me to dump everything I want to happen in the chapter, with as few or as many details as I want. This text is something that I’ll delete as I’m writing the actual chapter, so it really doesn’t need to be pretty.

I will describe what the characters do, how they feel, write dialogs without any formatting whatsoever. If I know I’ll need outside resources (to describe a place, for example), I’ll link an article or a picture to allow me to check it out when I need it.

This step is important in my opinion because it allows me to write without losing my train of thought. I don’t need to make this part pretty, it’s just an information dump.

When that is done and I know how the chapter starts, unfolds, and ends, I’ll start writing for real. I’m the kind of person that tries to make the story as good as possible on the first pass, so I’ll check for repetitions in paragraphs, re-read dialogs to make sure the dialog tags make sense, etc.

I try to not re-read a chapter that I’ve just written. Instead, I tend to move on to the next one right away to stay in the writing mood, and keep the editing for after the story is written.

Writing the summary

Writing the summary has always been the worst for me, and I try to get better at it. I usually write it after I finish writing the story so that I have a clear idea of what I want to put in it.

I think writing the summary is an art form in itself—that I haven't mastered—but the most important would be to say who the characters are, what their issue is, and what they’ll do to overcome it.