5 Tips On How To Start Over

Hey everyone, hope you are all having a nice Wednesday ❤

Today was a very busy day for both me and my mom, she moved to a new room so we had to clean and organize and declutter her stuff and by the end of the day, I felt exhausted. Yesterday was a nice day at home. I cleaned, wrote about 3.2K (yay me), edited, and read a book I am reviewing next month.

Today I wanted to talk about (or more so to share) about my writing progress. In EllE (working title) I am still editing. My editing is going at a slower pace than I wished it to be, but anything is better than nothing and slow is definitely a progress, so that’s good 😉

I have another project that I am working on. I almost finished writing it a while back (like 2.5 years ago). While I was starting to edit it, I’ve realized that there were too many huge blocks of writing that needed to be changed and rewritten, so I printed it and started working on it.

Sometimes in editing, you just need to start over and that’s okay.

Now that I am started over, I felt scared but also very excited, lol. It’s like visiting an old dream that you have forgotten, but suddenly remember bits of it. I was so scared to start over from scratch, but now that I am 35K words in, I realize that I’ve made a good choice. The plot runs smoother, the characters feel real and complicated, and the story itself keeps growing.

I wanted to share with you my 5 best tips on how to start over (if you have to start over), without banging your head on the wall or your table, lol. These 5 tips will make you work faster and better.

Btw, these tips work great with every new project as well, the only thing you’ll need to change is brainstorm ideas and then outline.

Print. Read. Highlight. Outline.

I printed my old novel (75K) and read it very slowly. I highlighted the parts that I thought were important and saved those parts in a new document, in a new order I thought they need to go.

Outline or Re-Outline the novel, only this time add every little detail you can think of and put all those highlighted parts in the outline. My new outline is now about 45 pages, lol (while the old one was 5). It’s like a big summery of your novel 😀

Start writing. Work in bursts.

What helped me the most is to make the outline in a new document and start my writing on that, lol. This way, I am not working with a blank page (so no fear of writing or writer’s block) and I will always have a good idea where my characters and plot needs to go, so writing came easier.

Writing in small bursts helped me a lot so far. I worked in 20-30 minutes of writing sessions (a few times a day) and it didn’t make me feel overwhelmed or overworked.

After each writing session, take a break with some yummy coffee or tea and some fruit. Enjoy the feeling that you were writing 🙂 After the break, get back to your writing session.

Edit as you go

Don’t wait after you finish writing it all, to edit. Try editing while your mind is still fresh and full of details about the world, characters, and the plot. If you finished writing for that day, take the next day to edit what you wrote so far. Remember this is a simple edit. You will not go into the nitty-gritty of things. Look at the plot and characters, and see if they make sense to you.

Try working in bursts in your editing sessions, it will keep things light and you won’t feel overwhelmed by the entire process.

Write the ending

This is very important, even if it sounds weird. Take a few moments before starting your first writing session and just after you finished with your new and shiny outline. Start thinking about how your story will end and write the end scene of your novel or your last few pages.

This will not only help you see your entire novel in a big picture kinda way, but it will also help you see all the details of the plot and characters. Writing the end truly helped me see my novel and what details I needed to add in the middle (as that is the hardest part for me, lol).

After writing the end, I knew what will come before that and so on… It’s writing your novel from end to start 😉 But it works!

Breath

Last but not least, breath! Take your time and rest in between your writing sessions. Try to find something that inspires you, like a great book or even just enjoying a hot cup of tea (or coffee in my case).

I really hope these tips will help you with your new or old project, as much as they helped me and if you have your own special tip that you wish to share, feel free to writing down in the comments so will all can learn 😀

As always, thank you so much for reading ❤

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