I don't normally outline a piece of work before I begin writing. I just don't, that's all. Outlining is something I associate with school essays, not necessarily with something creative and fun and so it's not a technique I lean on. At least until today that is.
As I have mentioned on this blog I have been dealing with writers block for a few weeks now, and my current work in progress, Revival, has been sitting to one side while I get on with everything else. It had started so well: a clear vision of the story's spine, a set of characters that I understood, an initial situation to get the action rolling and a quest. Pretty much everything a writer could ask for, all neatly laid out and served on a silver platter. But I ran out a number of plot lines, had at least two story-lines running in parallel, I switched jobs in the middle of all of this etc. Bottom-line: I lost track of my story.
So how to recover from this? Outlining seemed like the very answer I was looking for, a systematic way of tracking the arc of the story and ensuring that I wrote down what I meant to say (which sounds easier than it is in practice). I read through my work in progress and outlined the eleven chapters I had so far; they made sense, the work was coherent, and I liked it. Now I am outlining the rest of the book, the road home, and with tasks laid out before me I think I should be able to get back on track and finish the first draft.
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