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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20462
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Like many answers in life: it depends.

I'm not sure how Ulysses works, but I imagine it can splice/paste ideas, keep virtual notecards, and whatnot

Some writers draw out long outlines and try to roughly stick with them while others rely on stream-of-consciousness storytelling, at least for the first draft. It is also OK to do something in between.

Although it is fruitful to get all of your ideas on paper, you don't want to lose sight of the ultimate goal of finishing your book. Thus, you must show some discipline for forward progress. It is far easier to go back and tie up loose ends and worry about plot changes after your first draft is complete.

Are you spinning your wheels? Yes. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. Scene management is a necessary part of the editing process; it's just very inefficient the way you're doing it.

For myself, I wind up with an "extra draft" because my first run-through looks psychotic or thereabouts. The sentence structure is awful, many of the ideas are inane, and I dead end characters and sequences. But my imagination pushes me forward and subsequent iterations make my story look more coherent. After a complete draft, you can go through your notecards and see what fits.

In the end, subplots come together after a succession of multiple drafts, not multiple scene rewrites. If you write a complete story first before backtracking (too much), your best scenes and ideas will survive leaving the others behind.

Good luck!

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