To outline or not to outline, that is the question.

At first, I didn’t even know the options existed. I was just writing random crap outta my head, lotsa wish fulfillment and not a lot of plot or characterization.

Then I started reading books on writing, and ran across the idea of outlining your book before writing. “Or,” one author said, “you might want to be a go-with-the-flow, let your hair billow in the wind, wander-where-your-characters-may-take-you sort of writer. It’s up to you. Just try both ways and then decide. Many writers do it both ways.” Paraphrasing, here, BTW.

“Well, I’m TOTALLY a free-spirit, hair-in-the-wind type person!” I thought to myself. “I don’t even need to try outlining to know it seems stuffy and ridiculous! Never! I will set my characters loose in the world and let them do as they please!”

And so I did. And wander my characters did. All over the damn landscape. Not really to any awesome places. Not really for any reason. They just kind of went, and I wrote about it. Sometimes some stuff happened. Not often.

So I wrote my first novel, which sucked,then I learned how to write better and re-wrote it, and edited it, and edited it, and printed it, and came up with an idea for a second book, which I wrote, didn’t like, and abandoned, and went to work on a sequel to the first novel. I had jotted own some ideas about how a sequel might go, and I found my notes and looked them over. Short notes. Not anything “outline-like”. I realized that the key plot point could be interesting, but that most of the rest of my notes were just plain silly. I sat down and started crossing things off, filling in margins with better ideas, writing one-paragraph scenes for things I could see really clearly in my head, and in a few hours, I had an outline. I didn’t even try, it just kind of happened.

I wrote the rough draft for my sequel in a several weeks.

Now, let me remind you that the rough for my first book took several months, and the rough for my second took more than a year. Both needed HUGE amounts of editing. Huge.

The rough for my sequel is in pretty good shape. It needs some tidying, sure, but not a ton. I should have it put together in a few weeks once I pick it back up and start messing with it again.

“Hm,” I thought to myself. “Maybe there is something to this outline stuff.” So the next time I sat down to write a new book, I went with the wind-in-my-hair approach. Just to see.

It sucked. I mean, not only did I not know where to go with the plot, I hated the overall world I had built. So I sat down to write an outline. Re-started from scratch, outline in hand.

I’m half-through it now, in a few months after two years of writer’s block. I love the world now, darker, creepier, more insidious. It won’t take me long to finish this book up once I get going on it again. I’ve broken it down into four parts, and I have each of the four parts outlined as well. The outlines each took me a day or two to write, but now I know what happens next. If I need to deviate, I deviate; already have a few times, but the underlying theme and outline remains solid.

The lesson? Even free spirits need to know where they’re going.

Or maybe it’s just that I love the image of free-spiritedness, and I’m a secret line-colorer-insider, number-painter-byer. I just wanna be the one to put the numbers and lines down before I fill them in.