When do you start writing?

My point was:
If you obsess about the outline and try to get everything perfect then you might never get started. It is better to get started and make a rough outline and start writing and if you must, go back and forth between them and embellish as you go along. Trying for perfection the first time around for anything including the outline, is a good recipe for writers block.

@Teresa Edgerton
And I did appreciate his extension of the A.E. VanVogt Slan universe. However I guess we'll have to take his word for his abilities; although thinking you don't need editors or editing and you have everything perfect, and being edited, are two different things--I never think I need editors until they show me what I needed help with. Did he mention whether he does outlines.

Actually I have to take back the I don't know anyone; because I might.
There is this one gentleman I know who must write everything he writes perfectly because he is constantly bothering our office about errors that seem to upset him to an extreme and probably somewhat justified, snit.(He confided that he can't read anything in print that has errors because he catches them all and they annoy him to no end.)

He often sends such directives as: 'What moron wrote this? You should fire him.'

To which I generally have to reply.
'That was the boss. You know the owner of the company, president, chairman of the board and the person who signs our checks.
Do you wish me to forward this complaint to him?'
 
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For me, there is never a moment I go from plotting to writing because I tend to mix these stages.

Yes, there are defined stages of 'mostly plotting' and 'mostly writing', but they aren't separate.

When I start plotting, it tends to include writing down every snippet of a scene or location description that floats through my brain. Half of them don't get used, but those that do tend to form something close to an entire scene if I let my mind run with it.

For instance, at the moment I am in what I term a 'not-quite-there' stage when I don't seem to be doing much of either, and instead, I focus on refining and expanding on any written or plotted areas that I feel need more development.

To help me focus on where I'm going, I tend to plot as if I'm going to write a sequel, even when I'm not. That's because when you know there is an overarching storyline, you tend to think 'where is a nice place to wrap this up, while still having a few questions left open?' That's how I find my ending; it feels natural in the idea of a sequel, not forced like you have to finish this somewhere around here.
 
This is interesting. So far, most of us have said that there is no clear dividing line, but a kind of phasing, a transition from one state to the other without the two ever being quite entirely separate.

I find this interesting because if you just read the advice columns, many of them speak as if the two processes were quite separate. For the newbie writer, or for the writer who defines themselves as Pantser or Plotter, such advice is not very helpful. In fact, the only good reason I can see for most columns or books I've read is that by making the two appear so separate makes for easier advice column writing. It's much harder to give advice on the mess that most of us laughingly call our process.

Then again, I know there are people who are entirely disciplined about it. Georges Simenon wrote over a hundred novels. He would churn one out--completed, edited, and ready for publication--in three months. You don't do that by blindly groping forward.

But it would be nice to find a book filled with helpful advice for the rest of us mortals who do grope blindly--forwards, sideways, and backwards. And just because I'm currently planning in detail doesn't mean I'm doing so any more clearly!
 
Did he mention whether he does outlines.

No, he didn't, and I have always wondered how much work he might do in his head before he starts to write.

But when he is collaborating with someone, I'd think there would have to be an outline or ... something ... they could both follow, to make sure they are working in the same direction and not at cross-purposes. But that is a guess; he never said.
 

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