Sounds like a secret recipe! I sometimes find myself getting carried away with brainstorming, which seems to hurt my progress sometimes, because I trick my brain into thinking I've already done everything, and then easily put down the work before getting anything serious done. So I wonder, how much brainstorming do you do typically? As an example of what I mean, would you typically brainstorm an outline, and then brainstorm a chapter, before writing that chapter? That would leave brainstorming for the next chapter till after you've written the first one.

I know that understanding someone else's successful approach may not give me the same edge, but I do like to trust people and their best advice. =D