Why I Needed Fast Draft Like A Glass of Water on a Ship in the Pacific

Writing used to be almost completely instinctual for me. If you ever read the first draft of my first completed novel, you would see that pretty plainly. It’s pure kitchen-sink plotting: Every time the story slowed down, I threw in another attack or explosion, and made sense of them later.

Years later when I wrote Donte’s book, Taro’s (Knight Errant), Rafe’s (His Faithful Squire), and Keen’s all in less than a year, I was still running on instinct, but I was getting better. I remember Donte’s...