Charles Scott Curtis

The thought of going through a years-long process writing my first book (several drafts, many periods of self-doubt, long months of inaction and indecision, all of which were my fault), a year-long quest to get an agent, another long process of finding a publisher followed by a year's delay in my book seeing the light of day was too much for me.

The most attractive thing about being an indie author means that my success or failure all comes down to me. Rather than someone else tell me that my work doesn't fit their idea of a market, my answer is to go and find the market, which may or may not exist but it won't be because of someone else's determination.

Finally, while I am new to the field of self-promotion and bound to make a few mistakes, there is a certain freedom in controlling your literary destiny.

I try to be flexible, since stories have a tendency to not go the way you thought they would when you started. I keep a basic outline but I'm not afraid to go off in a different direction if I reach a point in the story and ask myself, "What if (insert possibility here)? Even if I end up coming back to what I had originally planned out, the overall story ends up being much stronger and I inevitably will have new ideas for other parts of the book.
Once I have an idea of the story I'd like to write, or even scenes within that story, usually I sit down and sketch them out. This can take the form of action bits or just dialogue with no other description. Sometimes I am lucky enough to create a fully formed scene the first time I sit down and write, but it usually takes me several run-throughs before I end up with the scene looking the way I want. It's why I admire writers who still use typewriters.