You could say I’ve been at this game a long time. My first publication credits were in teen magazines in the late 1960s. My first traditionally published book was released in 2014. Since that time, I’ve published two additional books. One traditionally, one independently. Can you understand why, when I sit down to write, my brain screams AMATEUR.

The lack of production isn’t due to a lack of ideas. I have those in abundance. Nor is it because of a lack of skill, or so I’ve been told. That’s a judgment I hesitate to make on my behalf. And there have been lots of short stories, essays, and non-fiction articles over the years. So, you might wonder, what’s the problem? Time was part of it. Until 2020, I held a full-time job that often required twelve-hour days, seven days a week. But hey, this is 2026, and I’ve only published one book in all that time. Ah, therein lies the rub.

In a ‘just the facts, Ma’am’ synopsis, here’s the deal. I’m a SLOOOOOOW writer. Except I’m not. That full-time job I mentioned above was in the legal biz. Part of my role entailed writing pleadings, deeply researched documents intended to persuade a judge or mediator to see things from our client’s point of view, often written on a twenty-four-hour deadline. It was intense, and it had to be fast, detailed, and defensible. Twenty-page documents flowed effortlessly from my fingers in the space of four hours. If my attorney was driving, I often had the outline banged out before we returned from court.

Did you hear that loud screeching sound? In my creative writing life, I’m what’s known as a pantser or discovery writer. In my legal life, I was an outliner, and it made an enormous difference. Given the nature of the work, my outlines were bullet-point highlights, not a hard and fast roadmap. They told the story of what, not the how of achieving our client’s desired result. The how came in the drafting based on documents, case law, and statutes. Dry stuff? No. There’s still a lot of creativity involved. Facts are facts, but the role of the pleading is to make them compelling enough that the conclusion is inevitable. Honestly, it was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t the same as writing a novel.

My idea of writing a novel comprised of throwing my ideas into the air and watching where they landed. Then I’d write from one to the other until the story emerged. That’s a lot of work when you’re writing crime fiction. It’s like managing the reins for a ten-horse team. The writer needs to be in control, but flexible enough to avoid a crash and still arrive at the destination. Then comes the editing. A necessary step in every novel, but an essential one for a discovery writer to move from the first to the second draft.

In the back of my mind, I understood that outlining made my writing life easier. I took several classes about moving from pantser to plotter and read numerous books, too. I learned something from every one of them, but not enough to convert me to the cause. One of my writer friends writes multiple books a year. She credits her outlines for making it possible. Her forty to fifty-page outlines. I tried to emulate her. After all, she had a proven system. The outlining went swimmingly, but the writing, not so much. The story bored me by chapter two. I felt like one of those monkeys writing Shakespeare. I knew too much. Instead of taking the scenic route, I was on the interstate, and nothing much tweaked my interest.

The last book I wrote took two years to write and is currently undergoing edits at the request of a potential publisher. That’s a long time. While the book was on submission, characters from an existing series clamored for new words of their own. Another idea, another plot, another three years. Scary thought. Then my husband bought me a book by K. Stanley and L. Cooke titled Secrets to Outlining a Novel. In his defense, he was tired of hearing me complain. The book reinforced my work-life experience. Outlining matters, but it’s not about the minutiae at this stage. It’s about the main events. The what, not the how. The how comes in the creative process.

I’m still deep in the editing process of one book, but I’m taking baby steps in outlining a new book. So far, it’s going well. If my calculations are correct, I should have the book written and ready for editing by August. Still not fast, but not three years either. I’ll report back.