“How do I know if my planning is actually just procrastinating now?”
“Should I stop planning and start writing?”
“Is my planning just a writing-avoidance behaviour?”
I get variations on these questions a lot. So, first off: for those of you who prefer not to plan and just dive in and start writing – go! Be free! You're allowed to do that! You can do the plotty-planning stuff in your redraft stage. Work the way that suits you.
Those of you who like to plan, at least some, before you write: you're allowed to plan. Usually, when someone asks, “Am I planning or just procrastinating?” they do actually know which, in their heart of hearts, but a few fears or anxieties are clouding their clarity:
- “Writing has to mean words on the page.”
- “I have to perfect the plan / world before I can start writing.”
- “I can’t start writing in case I get the words wrong.”
“Writing has to mean words on the page.”
It doesn't. Planning is part of the writing. It doesn’t mean you’re procrastinating: it’s part of the process. Not all parts of writing produce word count. (Read – or reread – Word Count Is Like Paint to set yourself free from the word-count trap.) And actually, everyone plans. Some plan first, then write. Some write, then redraft / plan afterwards.
So ask yourself, honestly, “Am I still busy with the planning or am I just nervous to write prose?” Often, when I discuss this with students, it turns out that they are still busy with the planning; they're just feeling like they “ought to have started already”. So here's a reassuring bit of info: when I start a new novel, whether this was back when I was ghost-writing or now, the first quarter of the time I spend on it is planning. These days, that's often three months of two writing days a week.
It’s fine to plan for as long as you need to. But be wary of thinking that…
“I have to perfect the plan / world before I can start writing.”
You don’t need a perfect plan. In fact, you can’t have a perfect plan: you’ll always learn more about the story, the world, and the characters through writing. Once, I did create a “perfect” plan: with my second ghost-writing novel, I was determined to be more efficient and planned every detail, down to each scene. Writing it was hell: there was nothing left to discover, no creative leaps, just an endless colour-by-number with words. It was also the worst novel I’ve written.
You want to leave yourself room to discover, invent, and have exciting creative leaps and “Aha!” moments in the writing. Those are often richer than what you could’ve consciously planned, because you learn your character / world / story so much more deeply through writing it. And remember, the person writing the story always knows it better than the person who planned it – so the writer gets to change the plan.
Likewise, some conundrums and mysteries are best solved through the writing. Sometimes you need to trust the process and leave things open: “Yes, I'm including the giant octopus. I don't know why, but I'm convinced it’s important.” Sometimes you can't know until the end whether it’s is an important detail or not. You might end up taking the giant octopus out. It might be the whole solution to the end.
Your plan doesn’t need to and can’t be perfect. It just needs to be enough that you can start writing. How detailed that is varies from person to person, so you need to trust yourself to know. In order to trust yourself, you also need to be sure you’re not thinking that…
“I can’t start writing in case I get the words wrong.”
Both things can be true: you can be still busy with the planning and nervous to write prose. Putting words on the page can be scary, especially if the page is very very clean and you feel like the words you write now are The Words That Will Stay.
If you’re still planning and you’re nervous of the prose, write snippets. When you're planning, sometimes snatches of dialogue or brief bits of scene just come to you, unbidden: grab some fresh paper, and scribble them down while they're coming. Tuck them in a “snippets” folder. It's glorious, reaching that scene and finding your hasty drafts already written. That way you capture it when it's fresh, you know you're not afraid of writing prose because you're doing it, and you're not hurrying yourself past an important stage in your process.
If you honestly think you have finished planning, at least as much as you can for now, and you're just tinkering in case the words come out imperfect: write imperfect words. Write it badly, and fix it later. Honestly, we do that anyway, whether or not we intend to, so we may as well give ourselves the freedom of intending to. Scribble all over that clean clean page, and set about writing, badly, knowing you'll fix it later.
We’re not musicians on stage, trying to get everything right in one performance: we get to work in drafts. Rough out the action and add description later. Or write two pages of description because you need to know what everything looks like, then trim and interweave it later. Chuck down the dialogue and add the action later. Use boring familiar phrases which you’ll switch up for fresh ones later. Write in drafts, in layers. Include octopuses you might take out later.
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Once you feel confident that you’re allowed to keep planning, that you don’t need a perfect plan before you start writing, that you can start writing alongside the planning, and that it’s fine to write imperfect first draft, then you can ask yourself “Am I planning or procrastinating?” And trust your own judgement.
If you want some help managing the strange mysterious process of planning, which can feel like mapping out mist, the Summer of Writing: Planning a Novel workshop will give you hands-on practical strategies, whether you’re starting from scratch or reworking raw draft. It’s in person in Oxford, full day, on Sat 9 August. Details and bookings are here; just 3 places left, so do be quick if you want to join it.
