Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop!

Today’s topic is: How do you keep from overthinking your story?

And remember to visit my fellow writers to see what they have come up with. You can find their works here!

This feels quite a fitting subject for me to talk about as I’ve suffered with it myself. My very first effort at writing a novel was to be a historical fiction piece based around Jack the Ripper. I started out in a good place – took a walking tour in the Whitechapel area of London, visited the Jack the Ripper museum, purchased copies of maps of the city from around the time period and trawled copious resources to ensure I had all of the facts straight.

I started work writing, crafting a narrative around these facts. But then I needed to build up a version of 1880s London that was accurate and believable. I began to stress over every little detail. Was it era correct? Would it have been correct for the people in question? I worried about it to the point that I wasn’t enjoying the writing process. And then I stopped. And despite one or two attempts to rewrite it, I struggled, mired in the minutiae.

Since then, the novels I’ve been writing since have gone very differently. I’ve had threads and ideas and loose plots, but nothing too restrictive. I’ve allowed my ideas to flow as I sit at the keyboard and the story just seems to write itself. The Twelve Days of Christmas is a touch different. That needed some level of plotting as there were specific details I needed to work out in my mind. But that aside, it’s much like the rest of my work. I keep the plan loose so it can move and flex as needed, and that suits me so much more.