"Here's the two common mistakes I see novelists make in the prep phase, either underprepping, which is sitting down with a spark of an idea and trying to figure it all out as you go. As we now know, that kind of creates a lot of decision fatigue and can result in stalling out halfway through or even earlier than halfway through because the initial excitement wears off and we don't have those foundational elements to keep us going. But then there's also people who tend to over prep. And that usually means that they spend so much time outlining and redoing their outlining and rebuilding their character profiles, essentially trying to figure everything out before they start. I'm guilty of this one too, by the way, which can lead to burnout and self-doubt and then actually never writing the book because we are so obsessed with perfecting the outline. We don't actually get to the discovery process on the page. So that the other side of the spectrum isn't necessarily the best way to go either. So I've found that there's kind of a sweet spot in the middle. It gives you just enough information about your character, plot and world to set you up for drafting success without getting lost and stuck or overwhelmed along the way and without over prepping so that you basically never start or that you burn yourself out in just the outlining phase."