TAKING TIME TO PONDER HELPS

Well, I'm so proud of myself. I'm coming to the end of writing another new series. It took a lot longer than I planned. A whole extra 30 days more!



Eeek!



But you know what? That's not always a bad thing. Even though I had a detailed outline of each chapter, and had replayed the entire story over and over in my head maybe thousands of times – it still wasn't quite ready.



WHY SLOWING DOWN HELPED MY STORY



The extra time I took on this one piece of work helped me make it more unique, more detailed and definitely richer. It also gave me more time to research.



I believe that your writing time is like a writer's own special cooking time. Some writers rush through the first draft and leave huge plot chuncks out to fix later. But I like to make sure that my plot is thoroughly flushed out in the first draft. That way when I send it out to beta readers they can concentrate on grammar, sentence structure, character development and big gotcha's.



Now I must be honest in saying my natural stewing time puts me either at 3 months up to 4 months (like this last WIP) of actual writing time. But at the end of it all, I've created a much better woven story.



DO YOU STEW WHILE WRITING? OR ANYTHING THAT's MADE THE END PRODUCT BETTER?LM Preston (www.lmpreston.com) , author of THE PACK, EXPLORER X-Alpha and BANDITS