Been Kind Of Dry Here

I have not actually written in over 22 days. I’m not saying that is an accomplishment, I’m just stating it as fact. But that does not mean that I haven’t been actively working on my story. I stopped writing 22 days ago because I got to the point where I had stopped outlining a while ago. You see, I’ve had a pattern with this story, when I first came up with the idea I pounded out a disgraceful prologue and a couple chapters and then I stopped. I had no idea where I wanted to go. So then I sat down an outlined chapters 4-12. When I finished outlining chapter 12 I was stuck again, I didn’t know what direction I wanted to take. So I figured that I’d just start writing and see where the flow of the story took me when I got to chapter 12. And thus, 22 days ago I finished writing chapter 12 and only had vague ideas of what would happen next. So I fell back to outlining.

Thus far, I have outlined chapters 13-18 and am working on 19. I used to hate outlining. Back in the days when I had to outline research papers, I thought it was such a waste of time. And I hated it when an outline was part of your final score. But with this project I have found that outlining is good. It gives me time to think and brain storm. And even though I didn’t do all the outlining at once I think it’s been helpful to do a little of each off and on. It’s a good balance of freedom and structure.

And normally, outlining wouldn’t take me this long, but life has been crazy. What with work, home duties and starting a new business, I’m surprised I write at all some days. And admittedly, I do 90% of my writing at work (as I’m doing right now ;)). The benefits of working at a super slow branch. I even managed to write 3837 words one day. How awesome is that?