Why My Book Has 268 Deleted Pages
Hello, dear readers,
When I write for clients, my process is completely different. I follow a structure. I explore their ideas, ask questions, take notes, and carefully plan before I begin writing. Everything I create is built on the skills I've developed over the past seven years as a ghostwriter.
With The Puppet King, I threw all of that out the window.
I started without an outline, without a clear idea of where the story was going, and without any real structure. I simply began writing, trusting my imagination and believing that my characters would eventually lead me where I needed to go.
I ignored almost every writing rule I knew.
I left myself notes in the middle of scenes that said things like, "Write the battle scene later," or "This sounds terrible. Rewrite it." Sometimes I'd highlight entire pages in yellow, leave comments in bright red, or move chapters around without any plan at all.
From the outside, it probably looked like someone with no experience had decided to write their very first novel. That's exactly what I wanted. I didn't want to think like a professional for a while. I didn't want every page to feel like another task on my to-do list. I wanted to feel like the person who had fallen in love with stories long before writing became my career. I wanted to experiment, make mistakes, get lost, and enjoy creating something that belonged only to me.
At least... until it didn't.
Little by little, my characters took over the story. They started making choices I had never planned for, the world kept expanding, and I found myself trying to keep up with it rather than control it.
Along the way, I made what many writers would probably call the biggest beginner's mistake imaginable.
I edited while I was still writing my first draft. I deleted scenes. I rewrote chapters. I added new ones, only to remove them a week later. Then I brought some of them back again.
My manuscript became a chaotic collection of yellow highlights, red comments, spelling mistakes that would make a first grader laugh, and countless reminders to my future self.
But I didn't care.
Because that chaos allowed me to explore my world in a way I never had before. Today, I know that world almost as if it were real. I know every major character's past, their fears, their motivations, and even tiny details that will never appear on the page. More importantly, I know exactly why this story had to become the story it is today.
Throughout the entire process, I kept a separate document where I pasted everything I deleted. Every scene, every paragraph, every conversation that no longer belonged in the novel ended up there instead of being permanently erased.
Today, I opened that file again. I was simply curious. I wanted to see where the story had begun and how much it had changed. So I started scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling. Until I finally reached the last page...
Page 268.
I had deleted almost an entire novel. Not because those pages were bad. But because every one of them helped me write a better one. Readers will never see those 268 pages. They'll never know how many versions of The Puppet King existed before this one. But the truth is, the book they're going to read could never have existed without them.
I think that's one of the most beautiful things about writing. No page is ever truly wasted. Even the ones no one will ever read.
If you’d like to follow the journey of the book I am writing and see how it’s coming together, you can find more here:
But if you want to, you can see more about my work as a ghostwriter here:
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