If I don't plan, then I need to be prepared to rewrite.

So if I don't like planning and outlining -- and at the same time, I dislike rewriting, where's that leave me?

Getting it right the first time?

How probable is that?

When I came back to writing, I started off with the wrong tone, the wrong theme, the wrong characters, the wrong everything.  I had to go back and fix it.  Nearly Human will end up being a good book, I hope, but only after much surgery.

Having it be digital makes rewriting easier, I admit.  With Sometimes a Dragon I'm working off a hard copy and it requires lots of typing.  10 minutes of typing to get to 5 minutes of creative reworking.  I'm having a really hard time with the 10 minutes of typing between every creative decision.

When I started The Reluctant Wizard I had a general theme in mind, and an analog plot -- my own early teenage years.  But when I finished, I realized I had nowhere near enough action going on.  Fortunately, in this case, I was able to come up with a parallel plot that fit the story well and didn't disrupt the original story much.

When I did Freedy Filkins, I had a template in The Hobbit.  As it turned out, a very rough and distant template, but nevertheless, it required very little rewriting.

By the time I got to The Death of an Immortal, I had absorbed a lot of lessons.

For instance, in the second chapter I realized that the tone of the first chapter was all wrong.  I had to go back and cut some very clever and snarky dialogue --because it didn't match the character and tone I was trying to present.  With Nearly Human, I didn't learn this lesson until maybe the fourth rewrite.

Then about the third chapter, I realized that by having a vampire who refused to kill, I was going to have a very boring plot.  I needed to bring in another vampire to be the bad guy, to create all the action.

I also decided early on the theme of the story, and that guided the plot in many ways.

I realized early on that I was going to have a hard time with two elements of the plot: 

1.) Making the main character a good guy and truly repentant even though he kills someone in the first paragraph of the story.

2.) Making the sister of the murdered character truly forgive the main character.

Again, because I recognized early that I need to address those issues, the plot was directed in certain directions.

So, yes, I think through trial and error, I'm learning what I need to accomplish in the first draft.

However I still need to be patient and rewrite, most of the time.  I'm also coming around to the notion of planning the plot a little more than in the past.  I caught the problems with The Death of an Immortal early, but I can't always be sure I'll do that.

I'll need to do all three things from now on.

Plan and outline.

Try to get it right the first time.

Be patient and rewrite.