Starting Over (Again)

Why I Restart My Books: My Writing Process

I'm a writer.

That much has been established.

I’m still new at this, but with three books published, you’d think I’d have figured a few things out by the time I got to Book Four.

Apparently not.

Every book has forced me to start over at least once. The writing process is grueling.

With Book One, I made the mistake of trying to write for a Western audience. At the time, it didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt… logical. A bigger audience, maybe. More relatable, maybe.

But then I got stuck in the smallest things.

Kerb or pavement or sidewalk.

Weather that didn’t feel real.

Times of day that didn’t sit right.

Flora, fauna, homes, roads—so many details I didn’t fully understand until I had to write them.

And once you notice that something feels off, you can’t unsee it.

So I scrapped it.

And I came back to something I knew. The book became about Coorg. That was probably the first real lesson: I write better when I’m not trying to fake familiarity. I also didn’t have an outline. I just wrote as I went. I know some writers do that well.

I don’t think I do. So it took time.

With Book Two, I thought I’d fixed that. I had an outline. Or something that looked like one.

And then, somewhere along the way, I drifted.

Not dramatically. Just enough that the story stopped holding together. So that first draft went too.

Book Three was different. I slowed down. I paid attention. I focused on the emotional layers, the details, the things beneath the obvious.

And I think I overcorrected.

There was emotion, yes. But the characters didn’t fully come alive. They carried weight, but they didn’t always feel like themselves.

Which brings me to Book Four.

This time, I started with an outline again. A better one. Or so I thought. But it still wasn’t detailed enough. I knew where I was going, but not how to get there in a way that felt earned scene by scene.

So… I restarted.

Again! Sounds ridiculous - I know!

The good news is I’m now on Draft Two, Chapter Twelve.

Thank God.

The strange part is—I actually enjoy this process. Not every day. But enough.

I like figuring things out. I like seeing where something isn’t working and then slowly understanding why. Even the frustration has its place. Some of the feedback I got, especially on Books Two and Three made sense when I really sat with it. Not easy to hear, but fair.

The journey is long though. And it’s lonely.

There are days I love it. And there are days I wish I could just dictate the book and have AI write it out for me.

But that doesn’t really work. Not for what I’m trying to do. Because it’s not just about getting the story down. It’s the pauses, the shifts, the things a character doesn’t say. It’s knowing when something feels off even if you can’t explain why yet.

AI can help. It can organise thoughts. It can make starting easier.

But it can’t replace that instinct.

And maybe that’s the hard part. Also the point.

Every time I start over, I think I’m losing time. But I’m not. Something stays. A slightly better sense of what works. A clearer idea of what doesn’t.

So here I am. Three books in. Working on the fourth.

Still restarting. Still figuring it out.

Maybe that’s not something I need to fix.

Maybe that’s just how I write.

This is perhaps my writing process.