The first Pringle enters your mouth. You crunch. The Pringle cracks into a number of pieces. You crunch again, and the Pringle breaks down into even more pieces. The flavour takes a moment to hit your tongue, but when it does, it is intense, enticing. You take another Pringle and start again.

Treat your novel like a good Pringle. Break it down into pieces. Work on them individually, and you can make them intense, enticing. Your readers will want to devour them. But with that first Pringle, it takes a while for the flavour to hit. That is your vomit onto the page, your first draft. But when you come back and edit the first time, the flavour hits you. You revise again, your second Pringle, and as you progress through the packet the flavour becomes more and more intense.

A novel is not a straight race track; it is a circuit. You drive until "the end", and then you are back at the start, and it's time to do another lap, and another and another. But there is a time when the race ends, and you must look for the checkered flag. It is not easy to find. You could keep racing forever.

But on your first lap, it is imperative that you keep your momentum. Don't dare to pull in at the pit-stop, or you may be stuck there forever.

A. Deviation.