For this second Behind The Book blog post, I thought I’d answer some of the questions I hear from readers (and other writers) about my writing process. Starting with the most asked of all…

How long does it take you to write a book? 

My answer to this one is always the same: ‘It depends how soon the deadline is.’

You see, by the time I start writing a book, there’s usually a deadline looming. 

I write five or six books a year, usually, which means there’s not a lot of time off between them – especially when you factor in edits and proofs and promo and, well, life. I do a lot of leisurely pre-writing, advance thinking and plotting out before I ever reach the first page (you can take a look at some of it in the first post of this Behind The Book blog series) but from the words ‘Chapter One’ to ‘The End,’ I’m nearly always on a countdown. 

My schedule is one of the reasons I’m such a big planner – if I don’t keep careful track of what needs doing by when, and pencil in exactly when it’s going to happen, there’s a chance the whole thing will come crashing down around me. 

This actually happened last year when, through nobody’s fault, a book schedule got severely delayed at the editor’s end, and suddenly all my deadlines started bumping up against each other. 

All of which is by way of saying that, by the time I was able to start writing Summer on Seashell Island, I had eight weeks to complete the first draft and send it to my editor. 

For me, eight weeks is actually a luxury, usually. Except this was a long and complicated book, with several POV characters and subplots. 

And those eight weeks? They fell right over the summer holidays and included the following life events: 

• A funeral
• A trip to New York
• Putting my house on the market and selling it
• Having the kids home for summer
• A trip to Derbyshire for friends’ birthdays
• An extended family holiday in France
• My son’s first day in Reception class, with reduced hours for the first week. 
• …plus all the usual, everyday life stuff that gets in the way of writing books. 

You can see the progression of the first draft of the book in this screenshot: 

Ever since I started writing with a view to publication, over a decade ago, I’ve kept track of my writing process: my daily word counts, timed writing sprints, editing speed and proofreading times. It’s fascinating (to me) looking back at those early spreadsheets and seeing how my methods, speed and obligations have changed.

(Also, whenever I have a particularly tight deadline, I look back at the 2016 spreadsheet and remind myself that things could be worse. The fortnight where my not-quite-one-year-old had both chicken pox and an ear infection, while I had a book due in and a flu bug of my own, was not a highlight.)

I like to keep track of personal events alongside my work progress, because it gives the numbers some context. 2,500 words on a day where I had eight hours with nothing to do but write isn’t anything special. 2,500 words on a day at home with a poorly baby when I was feeling dreadful myself is worthy of celebration. 

So, how did the progression of the first draft of Summer on Seashell Island stack up? 

There were a lot of fits and starts, and a few very long days (I’d love to say that writing 8k in a day to finish a book was unusual, but… it’s really not). But there were also a lot of days off with the family, or travelling, and lighter days where I caught up with admin or planning future books. 

Novel timeline

Do you really follow the outline you wrote?

This book mostly followed the outline I’d set out before I started writing, with a couple of notable exceptions. (Leo and Christabel particularly weren’t playing ball, I remember – I didn’t even manage to get them into bed together in the first draft!) 

Sometimes that doesn’t happen, and those drafts always take a lot longer. But if I’ve done the planning right upfront, usually things happen as they’re supposed to.  

The trick is just to figure out all the things that are likely to go wrong or cause me problems before I even start writing! That said, there’s always room in my drafts for the spontaneous, the flash of inspiration that comes at just the right moment – or even the detail I put into chapter one, not knowing why, until suddenly it is vital to the events of chapter ten! 

You can see my outline for Summer on Seashell Island in this screenshot:

Outlining a novel in Scrivener

Which writing software do you use?

I use Scrivener, and have done for years because it is hands down the best writing software I’ve ever found. (All the screenshots in this post, except the spreadsheet one, are from Scrivener.)

It makes outlining easier, because I can use the little cards on the cork board to lay out my scenes (rather than the index cards and post it notes I used to use, and lose). It’s great for keeping track of my word count, my deadlines, and making sure my chapters are vaguely evenly spaced.

I love that I can keep all my research, planning notes, timelines and even my notes for promo ideas, all in one place. (I also adore that I can colour code everything, but that might just be me…)

Most of all, though, I love Scrivener for when it comes to revising and editing the book (you’ve seen a glimpse of that already in the different colours in my timeline…). And I’ll talk more about that next week, in part 3 of this Behind The Book series. 

Writing a novel in Scrivener

Any Questions?

What other questions do you have about the writing process? Let me know in the comments, or drop me and email or a message on social media, and I’ll try to answer them.