The Start of a Book

I decided today was the day that I would start my second novel. This second novel is a sequel to The Opals, my first novel which has yet to be published or even sent to a literary agent.

For the past few weeks ideas had been floating around in my head about what would happen in this second novel. In my first novel I left the end so it was obvious that there would be a second novel, I just wasn't sure what that novel would be. I was hoping that the book would just come dancing into my thoughts and my fingers would just type that 100,000 word best seller onto a document, because writing a book is easy right? Wrong. So, so wrong. The ideas in my head were not a well organized flash mob. These ideas were instead, a group of middle schoolers at a dance, awkwardly swaying to a fro, not even on beat. These middle schoolers had the potential to be this amazing flash mob but they lacked the discipline. Same with ideas. My first writing tip was about sitting down and starting your book. I decided it was time to take my own advice and make those awkward middle schoolers into a professional flash mob that would take the world by storm. So I sat down, opened up a document, typed a few words, and decided to blog about it. 

Sit down and write your book. You don't even have to start at the beginning. If you have a scene in your head write it and go from there!

I'm one of those people that writes to see what happens. I don't even know the end of the story until I've written it, and I'm the one who came up with it. So if you're having trouble just sitting down and writing, plan your novel out. Make a plot chart (Google image it) and go from there. 

Now before I take my own advice and I close everything except my document I'm going to pose you a question, and please my readers which as of write (I'm feeling punny!) now are few but appreciated, answer this question in the comments and I will love you forever. 

Question: How do you write? Are you a planner or do you write to see what happens?

Alysa Tarrant