So now you are set to begin to write your story. You have everything together in your mind and think you know where the story is going to go. Sorry, but this is where you have to stop and organize yourself. Take a piece of paper and start to plan out your chapters. I sometimes open blank pages in word, mark them chapter 1,2,3 etc. and write where the story should be and what happens in that chapter. I don’t write a lot, just things like “meet Abigail, go for dinner, or get rid of Fred”. Anything to remind yourself where the story is going, and, don’t forget, as your writing progresses, you can always go back and add extra action etc.
I have read a lot of advice from experienced authors. All of them take breaks while they write. This I have found very helpful. I have tried, when feeling tired, to push on and get the chapter finished, only to go back the next day and wonder who wrote it. I now take a break every hour. Fifteen to thirty minutes is good. I do whatever I want in that break to relax my mind. Watch tv, walk the dogs, anything away from the computer. When I restart my session, I find I am set ready to go again with a clear mind and relaxed body.
At the beginning of every session, I go back and read what was written before my break, to refresh myself with what is happening. As I finish a chapter I try to move on to the next one before I finish for the day. This gives me the starting place for my next writing. It is very important to go back and read writings you have finished to ensure they flow the way you want. I wait a few days before I re-read the piece. I use an online editor to check sentence length, writing style, grammer and punctuation after I have read it and again after the edit to make sure it still makes sense.
Also check how many words you have written while working. It will surprise you when you think you must have written 1,000 words to find you only wrote 600. They say most novels have some 80,000 words. I noticed when I read novels that there is a lot of what I call padding. I am sure you have come across it. The story is progressing nicely when a new character is introduced. This will take up to 5 pages and about 1,000 words to describe him, his education and clothes and what he is going to bring to the story. By the time the description is finished you have lost track of the story, and then find the character is written out of the book 3 chapters later. In my first book I cut the descriptions down to as little as possible while still giving the reader enough information for them to relate to the character. This cut my total word count down to approximately 45,000 words, but kept the story moving, and I have had numerous readers thank me for it, telling me how they found the story moved along nicely. I do have 20 odd characters in the book so I suppose I could have padded up to the 80,000 words.