Writers tend to report very different ways of working. Some plan out everything and write a huge synopsis, others sit down and write start to finish. Some iterate somewhere in between.

For my part I plan out the high level plot, and a list of scenes. At most a 2-3 pages synopsis.

Then I write start to finish. No exceptions: Scene by scene, paragraph by paragraph, without going back.

Interestingly seeing as you suggest writing is more dynamic and non-linear, that method of writing a novel - which I've used twice so far, and in-progress with the third - is a lot less dynamic and non-linear than the way I write code.

I rarely plan out at anything but the very highest levels when I write code. I sketch out components and fill in pieces of code as I need them, and stub out other things, and then I test, and then fill in some more.

I can't write that way. I find if I try to produce any kind of in-depth synopsis I just end up changing most things when writing the full scenes anyway. I need to know the details of what went before to fill in the scene I'm currently working on, so I can't work effectively on it until I've written the previous ones out fully.

Some people do write by jumping back and forth, so I'm not suggesting you're wrong for you, but that's just not how it works for me. When I revise my draft I similarly go through them beginning to end. When I get it back from the editor, I gather up the notes, decides what to listen to and what to ignore, and go through my draft linearly, beginning to end.

I used the same process. I wrote the novel from the start to the end, never reading back during the first draft if not for recalling certain details that affected the latter part of the story. Before starting I had just a subject of a couple of pages and a few main characters descriptions. All the rest happened while writing. But while the first draft is so much a matter of inspiration and letting things happen in front of your eyes, what comes next is a lot more similar to improving a large software system. Reading again and again, finding weak spots, improving, reiterating this process.

> In programming, there is often a clear pre-defined task

How is this different from writing stuff? Most of the time you have some pre-defined thing you want to communicate. If you mean writing novels and not just writing memos or articles then the equivalent is coding games which is just as creative if not more than writing novels.

Computer programs can often be structured in nearly infinite ways while accomplishing the same (or nearly the same) objective.

Writing can often be organized and worded in nearly infinite ways while getting across the (or nearly the same) message.

There are some pretty strong similarities. Writer's block and programmer's block correlate.

EDIT: Sadly, writing has no compiler to tell me that I overlooked the word "block" after "programmer's".

Sure, the goal of writing a piece of software is to have a piece of software, and the goal of writing a novel is to have a novel. That's trivial, though.

When I write a piece of software, I have more concrete goals that just write a piece of software. I'll usually have a goal (a TODO app), and maybe some ideas about which features. Sure, I might not know exactly how I'll get there, and along the way I might come up with the new ideas, but you don't start with the goal of writing a TODO app and end up with an application that processes DICOM images.

With writing a novel, well, very often the writer has no idea where it will go. This varies--some authors spend a lot of time planning everything out, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. But a lot of authors discovery write. That's what I do.. When I write, I'm waiting, hoping, to surprise myself. I want to go---oh what the hell is that!?

When programming, I go, Oh, I need to do that, to get this working. While writing, I'm constantly feeling my way through each word. I re-read it, outloud, tasting each word, and constantly asking myself: how does it make me feel?

That's fair and I guess highlights that I wasn't thinking about exploratory writing or even fiction. It is definitely very different if you aren't starting the writing process with an end in mind.