A place for everything, and everything in its place

I'm a list maker.  Just ask my husband, his honey-do list is about a mile long.

The reason it's a mile long is because I make lists to help me accomplish goals.  I create a punch list of each item or task I need to acquire or accomplish to reach my ultimate goal.  This could be as simple as "Finish Grocery Shopping", "Clean House", or even, "Pack for vacation".  They can go all the way up to very complicated with things like "Sell House" or "Remodel Fireplace Room with Built in Bookshelves" which are really lists of lists.

So starting to write was no different.  I needed my list of things I needed to do.  If you read my last post some of the things on my list were really there to keep me from completing the list, but most were valid items I needed to get done.

The first item on that list was finish my very encouraging book leading me out of the land of Dummies and into the world of the enlightened published author.

There is an entire chapter in this book about Outlining.  I was very excited when I saw it in the table of contents (NERD ALERT!) and I was also very excited when I reached the chapter and was on the verge of learning how to properly put together an outline.

I learned the importance of outlining my senior year of high school.  Since I didn't take an English class that year I had to take a literary and a writing course.  The writing course I mentioned here.  The literary course was one of my favorite classes of all time.  It was called Woman as Hero and the entire course was about gynocentric literature.  The structure of this class was read a book and then for tests on the book we would write in class papers.  We would be given the exact topic of the paper ahead of time and we were allowed to bring only an outline with us.  The outline would be turned in with the paper so she could see you didn't just bring in a bunch of cliff notes.

At first I didn't put too much in my outlines and it really showed in my papers.  They were disorganized, not very well supported and were not receiving grades that were up to my standard.

I didn't realize that my real problem was in my outline.  About half way through the semester my teacher put a note on my test saying that she knew I was reading the material because my in class discussions were spot on, but my papers were not where they should be.  She helped me work on my outlines and by the time I knew it my outlines were strong enough to produce papers with strong, well supported arguments.

All through college my outlines were the foundation for every paper I had to write, even if it was just a rough couple of bullets of topics or arguments I wanted to cover.  Come to think of it, those outlines were probably the start of my list writing habit, but they sure made writing easier.

So here I was, eager to devour the chapter in Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies on Outlining.  I was expecting a sort of how-to outline for a work of fiction instead of that of a term paper.

I finished the chapter and I was a little disappointed.  I read the entire chapter and basically the take-aways were:

1. Outlines are important 
2. Always write an outline 
3. Even if you don't want to write an outline write one anyway.  

I had expected to know everything I needed to know about outlining at the end of this chapter.  I was an outlining dummy for crying out loud!  After reading this, I didn't feel like less of a dummy, I felt like dummy in the dark.

Well, now what was I supposed to do.  I did what I have been doing every time I got stuck on my writing.  I just shot from the hip to see if I could hit anything.

If I missed maybe I would try the other hip?

In hindsight I'm not really sure why I expected this after finishing the chapter.  In any of the other chapters she didn't give me a step by step checklist on how to write other aspects of my novel.  So why should the outline be any different.  You need to find out what works for you.  

So I already had this stack of note cards I had been using for story boarding.  So one night after the kids were in bed and my husband was off playing hockey I started to lay all the cards out on the floor in our living room.

Holy Winter Wonderland, Batman!  I had so many note cards strewn across the living room floor it looked like it snowed!  That night when my husband came home from hockey he found me on my hands and knees crawling around on the floor trying to get my cards in the right order.  For the next book, I am going to have to find a better way to do this!  Maybe a white board in my office... Oh honey, I have another item for your list!

The nice thing about this was I was able to see where there were holes in my story and I quickly plugged them up.

Before I created my outline, I had a real fear that I wouldn't be able to turn the few vivid scenes I had in my head into a whole story.  After going through the exercise of the note cards and then translating them into an outline on my computer it really showed me that not only did I have enough ideas to make a whole book, what occupied the 4 pages in front of me was the skeleton of a future romance novel!

I think I read through it about 100 times just to reassure myself that it was all there.  I made a few tweaks and changes but I finally felt good about this.  To be completely honest as I am sitting down now and writing my novel there are things that I come across in my outline that won't really work anymore because things change even as you're writing.  That's okay.  The outline is easy enough to change and to see what your changes will affect in the future.

So, yes, the outline is a vital tool in the writing process, for both fiction and non-fiction and you should write one even if you don't want to.

For me it wasn't just something to put together to keep me from getting lost while I'm writing, it was a way of showing myself that I did really have everything I needed and it was time to start writing.

That was a very good day for me!