Prior to becoming a novelist, pretty much everything I’ve in my life was completed in one stab and was either right or wrong, good or bad. Homework in school was finished in one sitting, turned in, and graded. Test were taken and marked right or wrong. Even as a lawyer,while there may have been some tweaking to the briefs I wrote, they were written efficiently, filed with the court to have the judge decide whether they worked or not.

When I started writing novels, a colleague of mine kept saying that writing was an “iterative” process – meaning you had to back up and do the same thing over and over again in different ways before getting it right. I HATED that word and was sure that wasn’t how it would work for me.  If I adequately outlined the story and the plot, then surely, I could write a novel straight through once, polish it, and be done.

For the past three days, I’ve gone back to my outlines of the last two books in the Rothston series and looked at what has written and semi-polished so far, containing the basic ideas and flow but in a way that is richer and has far more depth than the original outline. Steering it back to the outline would do it a disservice. And so I reworked the outlines using what has been written as a starting point. I’m close of being finished with the process, which I will undoubtedly do at least one more time before these two books are declared “finished.” It was the same with the last novel, released in the fall.

It is an iterative process, and now I embrace it. I can see the basic story growing and the intrigue mounting because of it. It is fun, even if it seems like a step back at times. So I’m thankful that I’ve accepted the repetitive, iterative process. It makes for better writing and reading.