So I got stuck again.

I was cruising my way through the Kosan rewrite—had written 10 or 12 new chapters to add to what I already had—when I hit another wall. I won’t go into all the details here: maybe I’ll do that in the next official writing update, or maybe I’ll hold off until sometime down the line. What’s important, though, is that I once again fell into my old pattern: come back to a book, get through a decent chunk of it, get all excited over the thought I might finish this thing in a couple months, then get stuck. And then, of course, I struggle for a while, before putting that book aside and moving on to another project.

Shortly after moving to the latest “other project,” though, I had a thought. Through my life as a writer, I’ve heard lots of advice from lots of different authors, but one common thread is that everyone writes differently. Writing advice, generally, only gets you so far, especially when it comes to how to write. Some writers need to follow a meticulous outline, for example, but others don’t use them at all. Some writers write in the morning, others at night. Some writers can write anywhere, others can only write in one specific spot. And so on, and so forth.

Well, the thought I had, while getting back into Usi 1 (which I’ve given the tentative title Souls of the Lost)—and putting Kosan to the side again—was maybe this is just the way I write. Maybe this is just how my writing brain works.

Going back to the whole not everyone writes the same thing: some writers feel they have to write their books in sequence, from the first words of chapter 1 to THE END, all in order. Others start at the end and work their way back to the beginning. Still others hop around, writing scenes out of order, not piecing everything together until the very end.

My thought, then, is maybe I’m just someone who writes books one chunk at a time. Maybe “finishing everything, beginning to end, in one go” just isn’t feasible for me, at least in most cases. When I think of all the drafts I’ve finished in the last few years, this makes sense. Blueblood? I hadn’t even decided what I wrote was a finished first draft until recently. The Procurers? I wrote the last chunk, like, a year apart from the rest. Even The Ravage, whose initial draft just poured out of me, I came back to later and slapped another 40,000 words onto the beginning.

So…yeah. I’ve grumbled to myself about how many drafts I start and how often I seem to get stuck on them, but maybe that’s just how I write. Maybe I need to test things out, so to speak, then step away when things start not working and come back later. Maybe that’s just the best way for me to do things.

Now, that could prove a problem, if I ever actually achieve my dreams. Because, well…actual authors have publishers they’ve got to answer to. And publishers have these things called deadlines…which wouldn’t mesh well with my “having to write in chunks” style of working. But hey, at this point, that’s still far off. No use worrying about that too much yet. And hey, since I’ve got at least 5 years (by my estimation) before I might ever get published, I could write ahead on a few of my series to at least somewhat mitigate those problems. Blueblood, Procurers, Kosan, maybe even Usi…any of those series, I could have one or even two sequels written by the time I get a bite on book 1 (if I ever do). And if that ends up happening, that could help with the whole “get stuck, take a break, come back later” style of writing I seem to have developed.

Anyway, just thought I’d share my thoughts. You can all go back to your lives now. Oh, but first: have fun, stay safe, keep reading!