Savannah Gilbo

speaker

3,356 appearances 13 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 18 Aug

Savannah Gilbo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo | How to Write a Novel & Writing Advice · #256. Why “Just Start Writing” Can Be Terrible Advice for New Writers · 14 Jul 2026 podcast

Okay, that's how drafting and planning can actually work really well together.

The plan gives your draft direction and the draft helps you deepen the plan.

All right, so just a little tough love for all the plotters out there.

Now let's go back to this idea of having a solid enough foundation to draft with direction.

I want to quickly tell you about three writers who did this kind of foundational work up front and had really amazing results.

So Pornika, she is a self-proclaimed perfectionist and she finished her first draft, which was just over 100,000 words in 88 days while working full time.

Then there's Maddie, a diehard pantser who finished her first draft in about six months in early morning writing sessions.

while raising her four young kids.

And lastly, there's Jackie, a lifelong reader, books to grammar, brand new to writing, who finished her first draft in eight months, writing in little pockets of time.

A few sentences in the drive-through, a paragraph here and there at swim lessons, right?

So three different writers, three different lives, three different processes, but all of them had the same starting point.

And that starting point is a strong enough foundation to draft from with direction.

And that's what's possible for you as well when you have a strong foundation for your story.

Now, before I let you go, let me pull everything together.

Because if you take three things away from today, make it these three things.

First, the advice to just start writing is not bad advice.

I just think it's incomplete.

It works for some writers and it backfires for others.

And which one you are depends on whether you've figured out your story yet.

The second takeaway is that you do not need a perfect outline with every plot thread figured out.

Showing 1341–1360 of 3,356 · page 68 of 168