New approach

I've decided to try a new approach to my writing--I'm actually going to possibly--outline--gasp, gasp--my new book. Something I have rebelled, resisted and wrung my hands over for years and years, the dreaded outline.

I've always been somewhat of a go-with-the-flow, stream-of-conscience, type of writer. Short stories only needed a first line or the speck of an idea and I'd run with the images, but and this is a elephant sized but, when I wrote my first novel and employed this attitude I found my story everywhere but where it needed to be. It took a long year of editing to reel it in and structure it into a plausible story.

As an exercise I'm dissecting some of my favorite books (see sidebar) with the hopes that the process will help me to focus on all the elements in my book. That's not to say that I've abandoned my free writing techniques--I've just learned that even creativity sometimes needs queues.