The moment a story grows past the borders of a single book, a whole new set of worries arrives.

How much of the first book do you carry into the second?

How do you keep new readers from getting lost without boring the ones who have been with you all along?

And when it comes time to sell the thing, do you pitch the whole sweep of it or just the first installment? Writing a sequel and pitching a series brings real questions, but most of them are more manageable than they feel when you are standing at the bottom of them.

Let me take the two halves in turn: the writing and the pitching. They ask different things of you.

Book One Is Now Your Backstory

The central challenge of a sequel is that you are writing for two audiences at once. Some readers come straight from book one and remember everything. Others pick up book two cold. You have to serve both, and that is genuinely tricky.

The way to think about it is that book one has become your backstory. The events, the relationships, the world, all of it is now the history your second book sits on top of.

Your job is to drop in enough of that history that a new reader is not totally lost. At the same time, you have to trust that the new reader does not need every juicy detail that a returning reader remembers. You also need to avoid boring returning readers by over-explaining what they already know.

Here is the part that takes the pressure off: do not try to solve this in the first draft.

Just write book two as if everyone has read book one. If you stop every few pages to catch a hypothetical new reader up, you will lose your momentum and your voice. Write it clean. Write it assuming knowledge, and handle the catching-up later.

When you revise, bring in a reader who has not read book one. Let them tell you exactly where they got lost and where they needed a little more. That is far more reliable than guessing at it while you draft.

Writing a Sequel and Pitching a Series Means Selling Book One First

Now the pitching, which is where I see the most unnecessary anxiety.

When you go to query or pitch a book that is part of a series, you do not pitch the series. You pitch book one. You sell that first book on its own merits, and then you add a single line at the end, something like, “This is a stand alone book with series potential.”

That is genuinely all you need at the pitch stage.

In fact, you might not even lead with the series idea at all, because the work right now is selling this one book. When you start working with an agent, they will always ask “waht’s next” and that is your opening to talk about the sequel and the larger arc.

Some publishers will want a rough outline of where the trilogy is headed. But how and when you share that is exactly the kind of thing you and your agent figure out together once there is real interest.

You do not have to walk into the room with the whole map drawn.

A Fun Way to Build a Series

One last thing, because series do not have to be a heavy three-book commitment you map out in advance.

Look at how the romance and mystery genres often do it. They take a side character from book one, someone readers were curious about, and make that person the protagonist of the next book.

It is a lovely model. Readers get to stay immersed in a world they already love, but each book stands on its own. And you are not locked into overriding or continuing the exact story you just finished.

It keeps the series feeling alive instead of obligatory, for your readers and for you.

You Don’t Need the Whole Map

The through line in all of this is that a series only feels enormous when you try to hold every book in your head at once.

You don’t need to know exactly where the whole series is going. You just need to write the book that’s in front of you, pay attention to what it’s asking for, and trust yourself to figure out the next one when you get there. 

That’s how stories grow. 

One book, one character, one scene at a time. 

I don’t usually spend a lot of time describing what my characters are wearing. Most of the time, I trust readers to fill in those blanks for themselves.

But sometimes clothing matters. Maybe she’s wearing the dress she bought for her wedding, even though she isn’t getting married. Perhaps he’s still in his work clothes at midnight because he hasn’t been home yet. Or maybe there’s a red coat that makes someone impossible to miss.

When it matters, you want the reader to see it without stopping the story to give us a paragraph about the sleeves. Here are a few tricks that can help.

Let the Clothing Show Up in the Action

The easiest way to make clothing feel natural is to let your character interact with it.

Imagine a woman arriving at a restaurant in a bright red wool coat. You could tell us that the coat is long and cinched at the waist.

Or you could let us discover it with her: When she reaches for her glass, the sleeve slides up her arm, revealing a thin gold watch. Later, when she stands to leave, the coat swings around her knees and catches on the corner of the table.

We never stopped for a clothing description, but now we can see the coat.

That’s the trick: don’t ask yourself, How do I describe this outfit? Instead, ask, What would someone actually notice about it right now?

Remember Who Is Looking

Here’s another thing to keep in mind: description always comes through somebody’s eyes.

If the woman in the red coat is being watched by someone who has a crush on her, he might notice the color first or the way the coat moves when she walks.

Her estranged sister, on the other hand, might notice something completely different. Maybe the coat is new. Perhaps it reminds her of their mother. She might also notice that her sister is still pushing up her sleeves when she’s nervous.

Same woman. Same coat. Different observer.

And that’s useful because what your characters notice tells us something about them.

I went to a party once with a college boyfriend. He muttered something about finding the bathroom and I told him it was over in the corner. He said he’d meet me at the bar and I gestured to the back of the room. He asked how I had noticed those things so quickly and I wondered how he hadn’t. 

Two people can stand in the same room and notice completely different things. That’s not a problem. That’s material.

True Love’s Door or The Stalker’s Door?

There’s an exercise I use in my classes that emphasizes this idea. Here it is so you can give it a try: 

Picture a door you know well. Your front door, a friend’s, your grandmother’s.

Write for five minutes starting with:

This is where my true love lives.

You’ll probably describe it warmly. The paint is a soft red. There are flowers on the welcome mat. The rusty hinge doesn’t even register.

Now write about the exact same door starting with:

This is where my stalker lives.

Suddenly those flowers look different. The hinge is rusty. Why are you even standing on your stalker’s porch?

Same door. Same details. Completely different mood.

The same thing happens with clothing. The coat doesn’t change. The filter does.

Trust Your Reader

The last thing I’d say is this: you don’t have to describe everything.

For example, start with the red coat. Add the muddy boots. Then give us the sleeve pushed up to reveal the gold watch. After that, let the reader’s imagination do some of the work.

That’s part of the fun of reading.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve given us enough, try handing the scene to a beta reader. Ask them what they remember about the character’s clothing.

If they remember the important detail, great. You’re probably done.

If they don’t, you’ll know where you might want to add a little more.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t to make sure your reader knows exactly what everyone is wearing. It’s to make the details you choose matter.

And if you want to play with description a little more, I’ll be teaching Writing the Senses: Transform Your Prose with Vivid Descriptions on Wednesday, September 9, from 12:00–1:30 PM PDT on Zoom through Craft Talks with April Dávila. We’ll work with all five senses and do some writing exercises to help you find details that feel genuinely yours. Register here.

Sometimes one good detail is all you need. You just have to notice it.

There is a particular kind of paralysis that hits writers at the threshold of querying. You have the manuscript. You have the agent list. And somewhere on your desk sits a query letter that is genuinely pretty good. You cannot make yourself click send. Not because anything is actually wrong, but because some quiet voice in your head keeps insisting that you could make it a little better first.

Knowing when your manuscript is ready to query is one of the most slippery, emotional decisions in this whole process, and few of us give it the honest treatment it deserves.

The Deck Chairs Stage

My husband and I have a name for the late-late editing stage, the phase when you’re just avoiding the work of sending the work out into the world. We call it rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The big work is done, the story is what it’s going to be, and now you are moving commas around. Could that word be a little stronger? Semicolon or period? None of it is hurting the book, but none of it is improving the book either, and at some point you realize you have been doing it for weeks.

That stage is a tell. If you find yourself there, you are usually not still revising. You are stalling. The chair can go almost anywhere on the deck, the ship is still going down. The honest question to ask at that point is not what could still be improved, because something can always be improved. The honest question is, am I holding myself back from sending this?

The One More Round That Actually Helps

If you are not yet at the deck chairs stage, and there is still a real round of work in front of you, then take it. There is a difference between perfectionism and finishing the obvious. If you have a beta reader you trust whose notes are still coming back, wait for them. If you know your opening needs one more pass before it is your strongest opening, do it. Not sure what work needs to be done, but pretty sure there’s something? Hire a professional (and might I humbly suggest you consider working with me and my team?). The honest, identifiable round always quiets the anxiety in a way that endless polishing does not. When you have done the work you can actually name, the send button stops feeling like a cliff and starts feeling like a door.

The other thing I will say is, do the things you already know need doing before you send it. This sounds obvious and it is exactly where most of us slip. I want the people who read my manuscript next, even the people who are explicitly there to help me improve it, to think I am a good writer. So if I know a section is weak, I rewrite it. If I know a tic is overused, I clean it up. Not because the agent or editor will not catch it, but because I do not want to spend their attention on something I could have handled myself.

Ready To Query Does Not Mean Perfect

Here is the part I most want you to hear. Ready to query does not mean perfect. It means done enough to be in the conversation (which, in fairness, is pretty damn well done). I sent my last book out when I genuinely believed it was very polished but I knew my editor would have notes. There were things I was not sure about. Sure enough, my editor thought it needed to grow by five thousand words, and was I willing to do that? I said I was willing to talk about it. I ended up adding three thousand and trusted my gut that the book did not need much more.

Perfection is an illusion, and writing is an art. No story will ever be all the way right, and the writers I see who wait for it tend to wait for years. The truer question is the one I keep coming back to in my own work. Did I land the story I wanted to tell? If I can read the manuscript through and answer yes, then, for now, you’re done. The next set of eyes, the agent, the editor, can help me from there.

Your Send Button Will Always Feel Like A Cliff

I have hovered my finger over the send button. So has every writer I admire. There is a real moment, after years of work on a single story, where the cursor blinks over a button and you are absolutely sure that as soon as you click it the manuscript will leave your hands and you will see, suddenly and humiliatingly, the one thing you should have changed. That feeling is not a sign that the book is not ready. It is a sign that you care, which is the only kind of writer worth being.

So check whether you are doing real work or rearranging chairs. Finish the rounds you can actually name. Ask whether you landed the story, not whether you reached perfection. And then, the moment your honest answer is yes, send the thing. The book that finds its agent is the one you send, every time.

Keep Going

Sometimes what you need is one person who has read enough manuscripts at this exact threshold to tell you plainly where yours stands. Someone outside the book, and outside your head, who can look at the actual pages, hear what worries you, and say either yes, send it, or here is the thing (or things) worth fixing first. Book a call and let’s talk about how we can get your story out there.

You wrote the book.

You’ve already done the hard part.

Let’s make sure it lands where it should.

Every now and then, as writers, we hit a point where the story simply stops. Something has to happen next, nobody knows what it is, and the longer the cursor blinks the more you feel like you’ve lost the thread entirely.

Getting unstuck in moments like that is less about forcing a brilliant idea and more about getting out of your own way. Here’s how you do that:

Say It Out Loud

I know it sounds almost too simple, but when you don’t know how to fix something, name it. Say it plainly, even out loud: I don’t know how to fix this.

That small act of acknowledgment does something real. It lifts the problem out of the swirl of panic and sets it on the table where you can look at it. That’s the opposite of pretending the answer should already be there.

Hand It To Your Subconscious

Once the problem has a name, you can assign it. You basically just say to yourself: okay, brain, work on this for me while I go do something else.

There’s some science behind this, a pattern researchers described as quick start, slow finish. Researchers found that students who began a big assignment early enough to understand the task, then set it aside for weeks. When they finally sat down, the work was largely done in their heads. They just had to get it onto the page.

That’s worth putting some faith in. Once you’ve genuinely posed a question, the mind keeps turning it over without conscious supervision. You don’t need to white-knuckle the answer. Ask it clearly, then let it cook.

Write About It

Journaling is the next move. There’s something about writing a question out by hand that lets subconscious thoughts rise and wander. Once you’ve acknowledged the question and left it to your subconscious, bring it to the page (in your journal) about once a week to see what surfaces. The goal is simply to give it a place to breathe.

For breaking a problem wide open, there’s a trick the writer Janet Fitch taught me years ago. When you don’t know what a character should do next, or how to solve a plot problem, make a list of fifty things that could happen. Don’t quit at 20 or 30. Write down all 50 things.

The first several will be obvious and boring. The next few get a little interesting. Somewhere around twenty-eight or thirty they turn genuinely weird, the kind of weird where you find yourself writing, I don’t know, he does a cartwheel.

And then, somewhere around forty-seven or forty-eight, something kind of magical tends to happen. You have to push all the way through every one, but there’s almost always an idea in there that makes you sit up.

Getting Unstuck By Trusting What You Already Wrote

Here’s the most reassuring part. Very often, the answer is already in the manuscript.

Writers hit a wall, go digging, and discover something surprising. They quietly set up the solution chapters earlier, for no reason they understood at the time. The subconscious tends to lay breadcrumbs for itself.

That can happen on a larger scale too. A novel can take years to reveal what it’s actually about. When it finally does, the theme is usually already sprinkled all the way through the draft, scene after scene, waiting for you to punch it up rather than invent it from scratch. The subconscious often knows the heart of a story before its author does.

So the next time the cursor blinks and the panic rises, try the gentler path. Name the problem, hand it off, journal on it, list your fifty things, and then go look at what’s already on the page.

The way through is usually closer than it feels, and gripping harder isn’t what gets you there. What gets you there is trusting that the work continues even when you step away.

I’ve been doing a lot of math around this lately, thinking about what a writing career actually looks like over time. Not the big debut-novel fantasy with the six-figure advance, but the quieter, slower version. The long game of a writing career. The version where you build an audience book by book, and end up with a body of work and a real readership.

There’s a kind of math writers do in their heads when they think about time. They count backward from some imagined deadline and decide there isn’t enough time left. I hear this from writers all the time, especially those in midlife who wonder if they started too late.

One of my favorite writers, my dad, wrote his first book in his sixties and worried that he wouldn’t live long enough to see it published. That was twenty years ago. He’s in his 80s now and working on book #4. 

The truth is none of us can say how long we have left on this planet. The writers I know who have thrived don’t rush to the finish line. They take the time to write the books that are on their hearts, publishing them one at a time, and building their career along the way. 

Why a Giant Debut Advance Often Hurts More Than It Helps

It’s easy to imagine that a breakout debut solves everything. In reality, it often creates a completely different set of challenges.

The pressure on the second book can be enormous. Every review will compare the sophomore effort to the first. Before long, the hardest part isn’t writing the next book. It’s quieting the voice in your head that insists you only had one good book in you.

Then there’s another reality that aspiring authors rarely hear about.

A huge debut advance sounds like a dream, but it also sets enormous expectations. If your publisher pays a six-figure advance, they expect six-figure results. Even a well-reviewed novel can be considered disappointing if it doesn’t earn back that advance, and as a debut author it’s difficult to get the kind of press that leads to six-figure sales.

One of the biggest questions publishers ask when considering your next book is surprisingly simple: did the last one earn out? If it didn’t, you likely won’t get another book deal. And in case it needs saying (I know we’re not the most math-minded bunch) a $5,000 advance is easier to earn out than a $100,000 advance. 

How the Long Game of a Writing Career Actually Pays Off

Fortunately, there’s another path, and it’s the one I’ve found myself on.

A steady start. A publisher who asked for the next book. Then another after that. Nothing dramatic, just a career built in increments.

That’s how many solid writing careers are built.

Every new book introduces readers to your earlier work. Someone discovers your newest novel, enjoys it, then goes back and buys the books that came before it. Readers who find you late often work their way backward through everything you’ve written.

It’s not flashy. It doesn’t generate headlines. But after several books, that steady accumulation starts to work in your favor. Little by little, the body of work does the introducing for you.

This is the part I wish more writers understood. The publishing world loves talking about overnight success, but most successful careers aren’t built overnight. They’re built one book at a time.

You Probably Have Twenty Years (and That’s a Lot of Books)

Back to that twenty-year clock.

In twenty years, you could write ten books. That’s a serious body of work.

One of my favorite stories comes from Lisa See, the Pasadena novelist. I saw her speak at an event once and she told how writing runs in her family. Her mother reviewed books for a living, and one day Lisa’s grandfather picked up one of the to-be-reviewed romance novels on the kitchen table, flipped through it and declared, “I could do better than that.”

He was in his eighties. And he did.

He became a romance novelist, and his books sold remarkably well. He built an entirely new career at an age when most people assume those opportunities have already passed.

If you’ve been carrying around the fear that you started too late, maybe it’s time to set it down. Sometimes the best writing career belongs to a later bloomer, someone with a little more perspective and a lot less hurry.

Most writers, at some point, look up from the page and wonder whether their writing process is all wrong. They’re not writing at their usual time. They’re leaning on different rituals. They’ve landed in a rhythm that no longer resembles the one that used to work. It can feel like lost discipline.

It usually isn’t, because there is no single right way to do this.

But the impulse to find one makes sense. When writing feels difficult, uncertain, or slow, it is tempting to believe there must be a better method. A cleaner method. A method that would make the whole thing feel less like wandering around with a flashlight and more like following a map.

It’s kind of like how, when I was a new mom, one of my best friends (who was also a new mom) was convinced that if she could just find the right baby sling, parenting would be easier. She tried every brand she came across on social media and in the stores. She quickly collected over 8 different kinds of baby carriers and guess what: parenting was still hard. 

Writing is like that. 

Why Writers Keep Looking for the Perfect Writing Process

Most writers look for the right process because they want relief. They want to stop second-guessing themselves. They want progress to feel predictable.

The problem is that writers often mistake someone else’s method for a universal truth. They hear about a novelist who writes two thousand words before breakfast, or outlines on index cards, or never revises chapter one until the full draft is done, and suddenly that process starts to feel like a moral standard. It isn’t. It’s just one person’s way through.

Tidy Systems Are Seductive

There is something comforting about a system that looks organized from the outside. A perfect notebook. A color-coded outline. A morning routine.

Some of those things are genuinely useful. Anything that helps the work feel more visible and less slippery is worth keeping.

But sometimes what we love is not the process itself. It’s the certainty it gives us. A process can be beautiful, disciplined, and impressive while still not helping you write your book.

Real Processes Are Messier Than They Sound

Most writers, if they are being honest, have messier processes than they describe.

They say, “I write every morning,” and leave out the three days they avoided the draft before solving a scene while folding laundry. They say, “I outline first,” and leave out the fact that the outline changed completely by chapter six. They say, “I draft quickly,” and leave out the week spent staring at one transition, wondering if they had forgotten how language works.

That is not dishonesty. Writing processes are hard to summarize neatly because they are alive. They shift. They include false starts, weird rituals, accidental breakthroughs, and long stretches of doing your best with a brain that does not always cooperate.

Your Writing Process May Change From Book to Book

Keep in mind, too, that a writing process that worked beautifully for one book may be useless for the next.

One project may want structure. Another may want room. One season of your life may allow long, focused mornings. Another may ask you to write in scraps and notes on your phone in the carpool line.

That does not mean you’ve lost your process. It means you are writing under new conditions.

Writers would suffer less if they stopped asking, “What is my process?” as though it should be fixed forever, and started asking, “What does this project, in this season, need from me?” That is a kinder question, and usually a more useful one.

The Only Test That Actually Matters

The test is fairly simple. A process is useful when it helps you return to the work, stay with the work, and move the work forward.

That’s it. Not whether it looks disciplined. Not whether another writer on the internet swears by it.

A process that is messy but effective is still effective. One that is elegant but performative may not be helping as much as it seems.

If you’re feeling tangled up, try a small check-in. What part of writing feels hardest lately? What helps you re-enter the work with the least resistance? What are you doing because it genuinely helps, and what are you doing because it makes you look like a real writer?

What Helps No Matter How You Work

Your process can look however it needs to look. And even the best routines can’t protect you from the sticky moments in writing: losing the thread of the story, not being sure what shape it’s taking, running out of steam somewhere in the murky middle. Those aren’t signs that your process is broken. They’re just part of the territory, and they’re worth having a few tools for.

When I was working on my first novel, I knew almost nothing about ostrich farming. By the time I finished, I knew a lot, and then I had to figure out how much of that to actually put on the page.

That tension, between what you know and what your reader needs to know, sits at the heart of writing about a niche subject. Whether you’re working with curling, paleontology, sailing, beekeeping, or an imagined world of your own making, you’ll eventually run into the same question: how much should I explain?

There isn’t one clean answer. But there are some things to consider.

Borrow A Fish Out Of Water

The most reliable tool when writing about a niche subject is the outsider character.

If you can, bring in a character who genuinely doesn’t know the world (a journalist, a new hire, a love interest, a younger sibling) and let the people who do know it explain things to them. The explanation feels natural because someone in the story actually needs to hear it.

You’ll see this a lot once you start looking for it, in books and in movies. The outsider character lets you put information into dialogue and reaction, where it tends to feel earned, instead of into narration, where it can feel like an info dump.

Let Setting And Action Carry The Weight

The other reliable move is to bake explanation into the action itself.

Carry Soto is Back is a great example. The book is all about tennis, a sport I know nothing about, but as the characters respond in scenes, I didn’t feel like I was scrambling to figure things out. I could tell what mattered by the way the story turned. 

If your characters can do, demonstrate, or react to the world rather than describe it, you’re usually in better shape. You can also lean on a supporting character whose role naturally requires explanation: a sports commentator, a museum docent, a teacher. Their work inside the story gives you a built-in reason to make the unfamiliar accessible.

Steal From Genres That Already Solved This

Sports romance is a goldmine here. Hockey, NASCAR, baseball: these books are written for readers who often don’t know the sport. They explain enough to make the stakes feel real, but not so much that they slow down what the reader actually came for. The same goes for technical thrillers and historical fiction set in unfamiliar professions.

Go to the library and pull two or three books that live in a world readers wouldn’t naturally know, and watch what they do. Where do they explain? Where do they trust the reader to fill in? This isn’t about copying. It’s about studying how writers you respect have handled the same problem.

When Writing About A Niche Subject, Trust Your Reader

Most writers err on the side of explaining too much, but readers are smarter than we give them credit for. If they don’t immediately know what a hog line is, they’ll figure it out from context, the way they figure out unfamiliar words in any book. You don’t need to define every term the first time it appears.

The F1 film is a fun example. I know nothing about Formula One racing (are you catching a theme here around me and sports?). But the announcers’ voices came in at exactly the right moments to tell me what was at stake. The explanations arrive at the moments of highest stakes, not in a wall of opening exposition. That’s the model.

Writing about a niche subject is harder than writing about something everyone recognizes, but it’s also where some of the most memorable novels live. Beekeeping. Lighthouse-keeping. Quantum physics. The specificity is what makes them stick.

Your job isn’t to teach the reader the whole profession. Your job is to drop them into a world they didn’t know they wanted to visit, and make them feel at home there so that they don’t want to leave.

If the idea of outlining your novel makes you want to run screaming into the woods, you are not alone.

Maybe you’ve tried it before. You sat down, you mapped the whole book, and watched the creative energy drain right out of the room. The story started to feel dead before you’d written a word. Every beat predetermined, every surprise gone before you’d had a chance to discover it.

If you’ve ever felt that, I want to tell you something: outlining your novel does not have to mean squeezing the life out of your story.

The False Binary of Plotter vs. Pantser

Writers love a binary. Plotter or pantser. Outliner or discovery writer. Structure person or intuitive artist.

But in my experience, most writers are not one thing all the time. Most of us move around.

You might start a project with nothing but a voice and a vibe, then realize fifty pages in that you desperately need a roadmap. Or you might carefully outline a novel, only to discover halfway through that your characters have other plans. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re writing a novel.

The plotter-versus-pantser conversation becomes another way for writers to judge themselves. If you outline, you worry you’re being too rigid. If you don’t, you worry you’re being irresponsible. Meanwhile, the actual question is much simpler: what helps you keep going?

What an Outline Is Actually For

Here’s how I think about it: an outline is not a contract. It is not a test. It is not proof that you know what you’re doing.

It is a tool. That’s it.

An outline exists to support the draft, to give you something to lean on when you lose the thread and help you remember where the story might be headed. It reduces the amount of flailing.

Some outlines are three neat pages. Some are a messy list in the Notes app. Some are sticky notes on a wall. Some are just a handful of questions and possible turning points. All of that counts.

The point is not to create a beautiful artifact. The point is to create something useful.

When Detailed Novel Outlining Helps (And When It Doesn’t)

For some writers, planning scene by scene is deeply liberating. It breaks the book into smaller pieces. Instead of holding an entire novel in your head, you only have to ask: what happens next?

That can be a huge relief. Scene planning is especially helpful when you tend to lose momentum in the middle or you’re working with multiple timelines and complicated cause-and-effect.

But there’s another truth here too. For some writers, too much outlining creates a kind of creative frost. The more detailed the plan becomes, the less alive the actual writing feels. If every beat is predetermined, there may be no room left for surprise.

And surprise matters. Sometimes the best part of writing fiction is discovering something you didn’t know before you started the scene. If detailed outlining makes you feel trapped, pay attention to that. You may simply be the kind of writer who needs some open space to hear the story clearly.

Build a Loose Outline That Can Grow With You

If you want structure without rigidity, try building a looser outline.

Start with what you know. Not what you think you should know. What you actually know. 

From there, you might sketch a few things: what your protagonist wants, what stands in the way, what might change in the middle, a few scenes you’re excited to write, questions you don’t know the answer to yet.

I especially love including questions in an outline. It makes the whole thing more honest. Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? Most of us are not outlining from a place of perfect knowledge. We’re outlining from a place of curiosity. And curiosity is a wonderful place to write from.

You Can Outline After You Draft, Too

This is the part I wish more writers knew: outlining is not only something that happens before the draft. Sometimes it happens after.

If you’ve already written a messy chunk of the novel and you’re trying to understand what shape it’s taken, a reverse outline can be incredibly helpful. Go back through your draft and write down what happens in each scene. One or two lines is enough.

Suddenly, you can see things like the energy drops or where things repeat. 

That isn’t cheating. That’s the work.

The only real measure of a useful outline is this: does it help you write the book? If your outline changes as you go, good. That probably means the story is alive.

Your outline doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be useful.

One of the best parts of writing fiction is that your characters often become more interesting once you start drafting. If your characters surprise you, that’s usually a good sign. It means they’re becoming real on the page, not just behaving nicely inside the constraints of your outline.

Still, this is the point where a lot of writers get nervous.

You had a plan. The story was moving. Then suddenly your protagonist says something you didn’t expect, or maybe they refuse the scene you built for them, or develop a sharper edge than the version of them that you first imagined. Now you’re left wondering whether this is creative discovery or complete structural collapse.

Why Characters Change Once Drafting Begins

Characters often look one way in notes and another way in scenes. That’s normal.

In an outline, a character can seem clean and knowable. On the page, they become specific. They react. They contradict themselves. They reveal motives you didn’t fully understand when you were planning.

This is one reason drafting teaches you things outlining can’t. You learn who this person really is when they are under pressure. You see what they avoid, what they protect, what they want badly enough to make a mess for. That kind of discovery is useful. You don’t want to shut it down too quickly.

When the Outline Stops Fitting

Usually there’s a moment when you can feel the strain. The outline says your character would confess. The drafted version of them clearly would not. The outline says they would go home. The person on the page would pick a fight and disappear for a week.

At that point, many writers do one of two things. They force the character back into the old plan, or they throw out the plan entirely. Neither is ideal.

Try a quick pass instead. No overthinking. Ask three questions: Is this surprise making the character more specific? Does it increase pressure, tension, or consequence? Does it still belong inside the story this book is trying to tell?

Adjust the Plot, Not the Truth of the Character

Once a character sharpens, the story may need to change around them. That doesn’t mean you need a brand new book, but it often means you need a better-fitting version of this one.

If your character would never make the neat choice you planned, don’t force it just because the outline says so. Look for the version of the scene that honors who they’ve become while still moving the story forward. What you’re looking for is alignment: character, pressure, plot. When those three work together, the story feels alive and intentional.

Does This Character Turn Actually Serve The Story?

If you’re not sure whether a character turn is useful, write this sentence: “When my character tries to ________, this new choice forces ________, which reveals ________.”

That tiny check can tell you a lot. If the surprise creates pressure and reveals something true, keep exploring. If it only creates detours (no forced choices, no revelations), you may be drifting.

A surprise is worth keeping if it deepens the central story. If instead it keeps opening brand-new doors your novel does not have time to walk through, consider cutting it. Watch for side plots that belong to another book, and emotional complexity that never turns into choice. Keep asking: what does this discovery change in the next scene?

Once you understand your character more clearly, earlier scenes may also need a light touch-up. Not a full rewrite (take heart). Just enough so that the sharper version of the character feels present from the start. You’re not changing the whole draft. You’re creating continuity.

Ready to Give Your Story a Shape?

When a character surprises you, you might feel like abandoning your outline, but your outline isn’t the enemy. Outlines provide the structure that helps you tell the difference between a surprise that deepens your book and a detour that quietly stretches it into something unmanageable. 

If you don’t have an outline yet, or if the one you started with stopped working months ago, I strongly suggested you sign up for my free From Ideas to Outline challenge, running July 27 to 30. Over four 45-minute live Zoom sessions, you’ll go from a vague idea to a solid working outline, and learn several different methods you can try so that you can find the one that fits how your brain works.

Your characters are getting more interesting. That means you’re doing something right. Keep going.

After years of dreaming about this moment, the book is on the shelves! Sit Write Here: 6 Mindfulness Practices to Help You Write More and Suffer Less is here. In bookstores. In readers’ hands. Real. This book offers six mindfulness practices for writers, simple tools to help you write more and suffer less.(If you don’t yet have your copy, order one now!)

I’m so excited to share this book with you.

When I started meditating in 2016, I wasn’t planning to write a book about it. I didn’t even realize how much the practice would change my life. I was just trying to calm my nervous system a little because I’d heard it was good for me. 

In the years since, the simple practice of meditation has changed everything. I’ve watched it change the lives of my clients and community members too. People who’d given up on their books found their way back to the page. People drowning in perfectionism learned to write through fear. Years of coaching have shown me that what most writers need isn’t more craft rules. It’s permission to approach the page with strength and kindness.

I wrote this book because I want you to have those tools too.

How It’s Landing

Library Journal praised the book as an encouraging guide that pairs Buddhist principles with practical craft instruction, highlighting the step-by-step meditation practices, reflection questions, and writing exercises woven through every chapter, along with the section on eleven obstacles I argue are writer’s block in disguise. Their verdict: a unique and affirming blend of Buddhist teachings and mindfulness that helps writers genuinely hone their craft.

Publishers Weekly described it as a gentle writing guide grounded in Buddhist framework, one that helps writers establish a more intentional, healthy relationship with their work. They noted the practical scaffolding: eleven causes of writer’s block, including the inner critic, anxiety about what others will think, and burnout, plus exercises for deepening character empathy. Their closing verdict called the book “a boon to blocked creatives seeking a fresh approach.”

That last line stopped me. That’s exactly what I set out to do. Not another prescriptive rulebook. Not another productivity system. Just a genuinely generous way into your writing.

What This Book Is And Isn’t

This isn’t a productivity guide. It isn’t another “write every day” book that ignores the emotional labor of creation.

Instead, it offers six concrete, research-backed practices that have helped me, and the writers I work with, show up to the page with less suffering and more joy. You’ll learn to quiet the inner critic, build a writing practice that survives the chaos of real life, trust your instincts in revision, sit with the discomfort of conflict on the page, and meet rejection with equanimity rather than collapse.

The book grounds every practice in scientific research as well as Buddhist tradition. Both matter, and writers deserve guidance they can actually use.

Thank You

Before anything else, I want to pause and say thank you. Thank you to the writers who’ve trusted me with your half-finished drafts. To the readers who’ve shown up to this blog, week after week, even when you were doubting your own work. To the ones who responded to my newsletter to ask hard questions, and refused to settle for easy answers.

This book exists because of you. Because I’ve watched what happens when writers stop fighting themselves and start supporting themselves instead. Every page carries something I learned from showing up alongside you.

The Beginning, Not The End

Launching a book doesn’t change the fundamental truth: writing is still challenging. Life still disrupts your plans. The inner critic still shows up uninvited.

But here’s what can change: your toolkit, your ability to meet the challenges head on, your knowledge that the struggle isn’t proof you’re doing it wrong. It’s proof you care.

When you approach the page with mindfulness, with gentleness, and the understanding that you’re not trying to write perfectly but instead trying to write honestly, something shifts. The words come easier. The resistance softens. The joy returns.

That’s what Sit Write Here: 6 Mindfulness Practices to Help You Write More and Suffer Less is really about.

If you haven’t grabbed your copy yet – today is the day! As soon as you have it in hand, send me a pic so I can share it with the world on social media. Today is a day for celebrating!