Building a scaffold

Remember that dull but really useful post from a while back?

It’s time for another. Like that one, it is pleasingly short, but (I hope) disproportionately helpful.

If you are newish to writing, you might buy the nonsense that you set yourself up with chamomile tea in a hut overlooking Lake Perfection and the words tumble from you like change falling from the tuppenny machine at the amusements. This is rarely how it works. And even if it did, how often can you be in that situation?

Life is likely to deal you competing commitments for your book writing time - other writing that pays the bills, significant others, life admin ffs: you know how it goes.

Your book needs writing, regardless. And part of why I am here is to help with that.

It might be argued that the art of writing a book is just to find a way; to not be one of those who is obstacle-coursed into submission.

Clarity and a clean process really helps. I speak as someone who found this hard to come by at first.

I have a brain that often darts in directions I hadn’t intended it to. This can be useful - creative leaps often result - but equally, it can be tricky to retrace the invisible breadcrumbs to where I left the intended path.

This is particularly unhelpful when in the early stages of writing a book, as I am.

I thought I’d share one of the practical things that works for me, in the hope it might for you.