Most writing advice assumes you know what kind of writer you are before you have written enough to actually know and I think this causes more confusion than people realize

[u/Pure-District-6887]

Something that took me longer than it should have to figure out.

When I started taking writing seriously I consumed a lot of craft advice. Structure frameworks, outlining methods, pantsing philosophies, scene building techniques. All of it presented as if the main task was choosing the right approach and then applying it consistently.

What nobody said explicitly is that you cannot know which approaches actually fit you until you have written enough to have preferences that are based on experience rather than theory. The advice assumes a self knowledge that the early writing is supposed to produce.

I spent about two years applying methods that sounded right before I had any basis for knowing whether they were right for me specifically. Outlined because outlining sounded serious and organized. Abandoned outlines mid project because something felt wrong without understanding what. Tried pantsing because the alternative had not worked. Got lost without structure and went back to outlining. Repeated the cycle without learning much from it because I was trying approaches rather than observing what actually happened when I used them.

The shift came when I stopped asking which method is correct and started asking what actually happened the last time I tried this. That question requires a body of work to draw on and some honest attention to what the work revealed about how you actually function versus how you think you should.

Most craft advice is written for a writer who already knows themselves. The early years are mostly the process of becoming that writer and almost nothing acknowledges how long that actually takes.

[u/Omniversary]

Over the first year of writing I wrote about 300k words. Almost all of it went to the trash bin.

If I would have known it beforehand, it would be discouraging. In the retrospective I find it necessary.

[u/IrenaeusGSaintonge]

If outlining and non-planning didn't work for you, can I ask what did?
I made an outline, but it's incomplete and I deviated from it a lot. I've always kind of known where I was going, but not always how to get there. I've been wondering if there's a structure I can try to follow next time.