Writing has always been a passion of mine.
Even when I wasn’t terribly good at it.
It has taken me many years to appreciate “the journey” of writing. As a typical, goal-oriented Virgo, I am all about reaching the destination. I love crossing things off my to-do lists. And like anyone, my lists get rather long. Ticking things off can feel liberating… and a tad paltry when the list stretches all the way to the floor and unfurls itself across the room.
So, it might surprise you to know that I, a born list-maker and taskmaster, despised outlines.
I would free write a while, caught up in the flow of the words as my stories cascaded out of me. And then, I would run out of ideas. My plot line would dry up like a spring in the desert, and I would wade through the endless sands of writer’s block with nothing but towering dunes in my path. I thought outlines could only inhibit my creativity.
Then, I learned how to use them.
Bulleted lists suited my psyche better than letters or roman numerals. Their lack of determined sequence allowed their contents to be moved around with impunity. They felt less prescriptive and didn’t demand proper formatting. Just hit enter and plunk down another bullet. Indent them now or later if it soothes your neurotic, internal editor, but write. Just write.
Outlines didn’t bereave me of the joy of free writing. I’d let plot points flow out of me, each one bulleted haphazardly beneath its sister ideas. Terrible grammar, incomplete sentences, scant punctuation—it was liberating to stop editing myself long enough to get my ideas down. And because I typed much faster (and more legibly) than I wrote, I created my outlines on a computer. This meant I could move ideas around with the click of a mouse.
It was the best of both worlds: I could free write AND have a plan. And I wasn’t married to anything. I could change things on a whim.
Suddenly, outlines weren’t prisons. They were paths to freedom.
And they got me to the end of my stories. Or, at least, darn close.
Knowing where my story was heading (and how I could get there) opened up a world of possibilities—more than if I had not had a plan and gotten stuck. Finding those possibilities as I went turned my goal of writing a story into the most fascinating journey.
Now, I can’t function without an outline or two. I couldn’t have written the first two and a half books of the “Realm Riders” series without outlines. There is nothing like discovering the journey an outline describes. I don’t love a cliché, but this one is true: the journey really IS the destination.
-H.A.
Still hate an outline? What is your creative process?
