A Sentence a day

I'm in Miami, having flown back late last evening, and getting ready for the drive back to Naples.
Thinking about some of the challenges I encountered when writing Nightmare Voyage, hopefully as the second book progresses, I can avoid some of those pitfalls.  When I started writing Nightmare Voyage, I just sat in front of the computer and started writing, how hard can it be to write a book. LOL  I had the idea and the characters, sans names, in my head for years, so just sit down and tell the story, right?  So you sit down at the computer, bring up a blank page and the words flow.  I really didn't have any trouble with ideas, I can sit and write for hours and hours.  But the problems is, with all of theses exciting scenes happening, how can you make this a coherent book (I'm still not sure I did. I'll leave that up to the readers to decide).  I like to think of this as stream of consciousness writing.  The ideas just pour out of you and then you need to organize them into chapters and a story focused around one plot line.  Not so easy.  During my many re-writes of the book, several chapters were deleted and new ones added.  This was particularly challenging as the outline for book 2 was already written.  So, whenever you delete and add a chapter, you need to make sure all the facts agree across the whole book and trilogy. For example, I had a chapter about cattle and horses and rodeos, actually two chapters, that were a lot of fun, but they didn't really relate strongly to the main plot, so I cut them, but inside one of those chapters was a section about training Blackjack, a thoroughbred race horse for a big race.  The time line got a bit messed up, so in a later chapter, when Blackjack was racing, I referred back to the other chapter that was no longer there, oops.  So, you have to go back and re-write in that section and make it fit. For book 2, after doing much research about writing books, I set up an outline well before beginning the book.  This is a very important organizational tool that I highly recommend.  Not to say, I still don't go off on tangents, but it helps to keep me more on  track.  Now, I know what everyone is saying that is reading this, "I thought the book was about sailing?" It is, but there are alot of other areas of life that I explore. You'll just have to read it to understand.
But one piece of advice I would have for other folks trying to write their first book, write something every day.  Even if it's just a sentence or two, it keeps your mind working on the plots and characters.  Even if it's just... a sentence a day.