Now you’ve planned the book! Now comes the fun part – writing it!

The first thing to think about is where you will write your first draft – typed on a laptop or handwritten in a notebook. Most people will head straight to their laptop as it is the easiest route and means you can head straight into the editing stage afterwards. I started down this route with my first book; and it was all fine until my laptop had a meltdown one evening and turned itself off, losing the first five chapters of my book. And even when writing this book (the third book) my memory stick crashed and wouldn’t allow me to access anything on it, meaning I had to restart typing up all my work again. So I chose to write the draft by hand first and then type it up afterwards. But always remember however you chose to write your manuscript – DON’T FORGET TO SAVE IT TO THE CLOUD!! You can never go wrong with the cloud and you could also send a copy of it to your email or save it to a separate memory stick to ensure you have another copy of it somewhere else at all times.

I have tackled the writing stage differently when it came to writing my first two books:

Book One – I wrote the whole first manuscript and then typed it afterwards.

Book Two – I wrote each chapter and then typed it before moving onto the next one.

Now I am going to give a run-down as to how I tackled book three.

I started off by using the plans I had created earlier (see in the previous Writing Process Post as to how I created those) to create an in-depth plan in my notes app for each chapter as I write it. This plan is very much the bulk of the chapter written without the small filling elements that create the chapter to flow.

Once the bulk plan has been written, I then turn my focus onto turning this into a handwritten chapter. I preferred this pattern when it came to each chapter as I know if I was handwriting each chapter blind without a detailed plan, I would be spending more time thinking of how it was going to start and constantly crossing out different ideas that it wouldn’t be a coherent chapter by the time I had eventually finished. It may seem a long winded way to some people, but for me, it helps put my mind into some order when I am focusing on each chapter and makes the process less overwhelming.

After this lengthy process, I move onto typing the first complete manuscript up. Doing this allows me to complete a small edit on the novel as I can change any parts of the written manuscript that don’t make sense or I now don’t like, or any spelling mistakes that I notice etc and this will help me out in the editing stage.

I will also at this point take the time to write out other elements of the book that I would like to be edited, such as the acknowledgements and then I print it off.

And that’s it! You’ve done it – you’re one step closer to finishing your novel!

I know I said in my last writing blog that the biggest part of this is the writing, but now you come to the most tedious and mind-numbing… the editing stage!

So get ready for that!

(In my last blog post about writing, I mentioned that it was three days until my second book was released. I am now thrilled to announce that as I am writing this, my third book ‘Festive Foul Play’ will be released next month – 11th October – but it is available to pre-order now! I will leave a link to where you can send in your pre-order and I will also include a link to the book trailer which you can now see on YouTube!) And the pre-orders have arrived – here’s the cover!!

Until next time!

See you soon!

TTFN – Love Hannah ❤️ x

Written: 16th September 2025.