New novel

I am working on a new novel; the character is chosen, the theme is coming, the plot is incubating, and the plan is developing. Usually it takes me about ten days to develop the plan for the novel.
I begin with a one sentence summary of the entire novel, and then I work from them to discover the locale, the plot, and the characters. Notice, I said characters; the protagonist has been chosen, but the antagonists have still to be considered.
For the next few days I will let the story percolate in my mind with many 'what ifs', but each day I will keep notes on these 'what ifs'.
Next week, starting Monday, I will spent the next ten days exploring my novel idea.
I will only spend an hour a day on this development because I want to keep it fresh in my mind without a great deal of stress.
As I said, I plan to spend an hour a day working on this novel; I will chose a time and try to stick to it, writing at the same time and place each day until I've developed a routine for the actual writing of the manuscript.
The first day of the ten days I will spend defining my idea: What is the novel about?
To this is the most important part of writing a novel. Write down all the things you can think of about the novel at this point. Then condense down to a one sentence summary of the novel; be sure it is only one sentence.
After the hour, when you are satisfied with that one sentence, write it out and tape it to your compute and keep it before your the entire time you are writing your novel.
That's why it's so important to think it out clearly and precisely.
Tomorrow I will tell you about the second step that I use.