How do you write a novel?

I heard a program not too long ago on the radio that suggests you write "one page at a time." You can always go back and re-edit what you write, but "one page at a time" sounds like solid advise.

It's probably not necessary to start out with an outline of everything that you're going to write, as sometimes things tend to "all come together" in the end, but it does help. I'm not a very organized person myself, but I found that when I forced myself to draw outlines of scenes and characters my ideas were much clearer to me than they had been before.

As for how often to write, the best advice I was ever given was write every day, at least one paragraph, even if you feel you can't. Now at first I found the last bit of this confusing. Even if I feel I can't? When I feel I can't nothing seems to come out. But what you're supposed to do with it is write anything even if it is the word anything over and over. Even if you're swearing and talking about how you can't think of anything, write it down. The point is to get you used to writing, and to wake up your mind.

Hope this helps a little. I sympathize with your situation. Writing is really rewarding, but sometimes tricky and aggravating.

Jora has good advice.

I'm kinda-sorta seriously working on an (ahem) romance novel (hey, I figured it would be quick + easy) and I mapped everything out. (That's as far as I got, then got super-busy, hope to get back to it.) But the mapping really helped, then I can just kind of fill things in, know where they are going. This included backstory, dramatic arc, pacing, names, whathaveyou.

What happens to me sometimes in my serious writing is that if I just write with no particular end in sight, I get on tangents that don't strengthen the story but I am too attached to. Occasionally I've had the fortitude to excise 'em whole and make a separate story out of 'em if I must, but generally I find that if I have a backbone in mind already, more of my writing goes in service of the story.