After a very long stint of editing and rewriting, I am back to writing daily again (no, not as part of NaNoWriMo).

I’ve learned a few things from my first time around, and now I’m just writing as much as I can as fast as I can. The goal at this point is to get things down, to have something to work with later as most of the work will happen in the first and second draft anyway. So long as the bones and most of the body are there, I’m fine. This means that I’m no longer sweating details like times, names of things and exact locations. I just highlight them and will work around them, leaving those decisions for a later draft, when I have a much better idea of what the story needs.

I’m also using Scrivener’s bookmarks from the start to document which characters, places and important objects appear in which chapter. I highly recommend that you do so, because it allows you to make significant changes in later drafts more easily. That’s how I changed the name of one of my main characters in my previous novel. Just add characters and places notes in different text notes under “Characters” and “Places”, and then using the Inspector, add an internal bookmark.