When I began writing my first novel, Ethereal Imprints, I didn’t have an outline, a plan for what the story would become. The plot that I had created and the characters that I’d made were all mythical and fantastical, and I was making everything up as I went along. For this reason, it took me a LONG time to write, and then a longer time to figure out how to publish the novel. Altogether, creating Ethereal Imprints, the final product, took 5 years! For Arcadian Divinity, it didn’t take as long to publish, since I knew what I was doing the next time around. But I didn’t outline that novel either, so the entire story took 17 months to write! When it came to publishing Arcadian Divinity, unfortunately there were some setbacks, but everything turned out alright, and the novel will be released and out in the world in just a few days!
The good thing about not outlining my stories is that I have learned my lesson with my third novel, Revived Awareness! I have had the idea in my head for this story since I was 16, WAY before the idea for Ethereal Imprints came to me. Now, years later, I know what I’m doing, and I know how to self-publish, so it makes things A LOT easier. I also have realized that I had to outline Revived Awareness in order to finally finish the novel and get the idea out of my head and onto the page. I had created an outline for Revived Awareness, and based on that, I started to do chapter by chapter summaries. Basically, I’d summarize each chapter, so that I knew what to write. Currently, I finished the chapter summaries, and have started to handwrite what is going to happen in each chapter, and then later type what I have written into a Word document. It is A LOT to do, but I love it! So, the process of publishing Revived Awareness is the fastest among the 3 novels that I have written so far! Again, because I’m done with planning and the chapter summaries, Revived Awareness might come out this year, or it might not. I have to just get the ideas on the page and out of my brain currently.
I hope everyone is having a great morning, and I will post again very soon!