Outlining! One of my least favorite writing topics. JA Konrath, with whom I frequently disagree, posts about why and how he outlines. He’s posted an actual outline for one of his books as an example, which was very interesting to read and impressive in its detail.This part cracked me up:
Once the story is down on paper (in outline form) all you need to do is add the bells and whistles; the action, dscription, and dialog. You don’t need to worry about what happens next because you already know. [his emphasis]
Outlining always sounds so pleasant to me, for exactly that reason. Sit down to write, glance at the outline to check what scene to write, type it out. Get a different idea? Fiddle with the outline to see if it works, rather than writing three chapters that have to be deleted later. Sounds lovely.
Only problem is, I can’t write the darn outline. The only way for me to find out what happens next is to write actual prose. I am ok with that, though the apparent efficiency of outlining appeals to me.
Finally, a couple posts on writing, which you’ve probably all read already:
on writing communities and advice, which is a followup to her post on success and happy writers and advice, which is a response to ‘s post about rules, particularly “write every day”.So. I don’t have anything to add to all the comments people have made already, but I’m not going to let that stop me, because it’s Friday.
For me, “write every day” is good advice. I don’t actually do it. But “write three times a week” or “once a week” just doesn’t work for me, for the same reason that my exercise three times a week plan doesn’t work either. I procrastinate, and then if I don’t feel like doing it on Thursday and Friday and Saturday, or something else vital comes up, I’m stuck. So I set myself several tasks to accomplish by the end of the week or the month, and try to do something every day that will help accomplish them, whether it’s writing a thousand words or two sentences or doing a critique or making a page of notes.
There’s always some writing-related task I can do that doesn’t require feeling like writing. (I’ll note that I’m including *related* things in that sentence.) And often, even if I don’t want to write, I can open the file and get something useful done anyway.
Even if it would be more fun, at any given moment, to see a movie or play on the net, in the long run I’m happier when I’m getting writing done. That means making myself sit down and do it even if I’d rather do something else. It’s like fitness: I feel better when I eat healthy, even if I’d be perfectly happy to eat nothing but dessert for a week.
I think I’m pretty good at ignoring advice that doesn’t work for me. Perhaps too good.