Coolidge said it best when he talked about persistentness and pressing on.
At the moment I'm outlining things. I found a terrific outline coaching webpage based on the snowflake method. It's here.
It's nothing miraculous, but it's a nice format, detailed, and should help when the serious writing begins. One of the things I like most about it is that the author writes, "take and hour and write a character page for your main character."
This is a small thing but it hit me quite perfectly. No one has said, "take an hour" like that. It won't take me an hour, but having the order to "take an hour" some how helps. I've gotten through steps 1 and 2 and have completed two character pages on step 3. Already I can tell this work before the novel will have positive affects on the writing of the novel later.
Who knew someone telling me to "take an hour" could be so powerful.
