A Personal and Intentional Writing Process – Getting a Novel Ready for Query

The method no one talks about online

I’m three weeks into line editing my novel, which is going a lot slower than I expected.

But let me rewind a little.

10 months ago, while my then 2-month-old baby slept cocooned by my side, I opened my laptop and outlined my first novel.

I had been wanting to write for a while. I even wrote 40,000 words the year before that I somehow discarded. But there was always something stopping me. Too many freelance gigs. Not enough time. Birthing a baby. Simply feeling inadequate.

But gosh, that spark was there. Ever so dim. Waiting for me to sit in the quiet, with nothing else to do than watch my baby sleep.

From January onward, I worked through the process: developing characters, expanding my outline into chapters and scenes, researching the most random facts online to make my story more real, creating Pinterest boards to make my descriptions richer. I mean, I even chose a cast, watching the story unfold in my head as if Sofia Coppola directed it.

It was (still is?) the kind book I wrote in an absolute clear, flow state.

I finished the first draft at the end of August. Completed the developmental revision in a month. I’m now slowly working on a sentence level (so: line editing), which I’m aiming to finish by the end of October. I started making a spreadsheet of literary agents and prepping my query package for them.

Looking back, I could have done this process in less than 10 months. (Here and there, life got in the way, and it wasn’t my priority — But that’s beside the point.)

Someone I connected on Instagram was surprised how quick I was working through this book. As if I was rushing it.

I’d say it is quite the opposite.

I’ve been very slow and intentional, outlining my ideas but also letting them mirror out on their own. The whole thing felt highly intuitive and I know I can easily replicate that state onto a hundred more books.

Without noticing it, I followed a process. I worked in patterns. Not the kind that is Google-able.

Sure, I wrote an outline, broke it down into chapters, scenes, assigned a word count for each, and puzzled my story using arcs. But there’s a lot more to it that most people write about (at least the ones I’ve come across).

So here it is…