If I keep treating this outline/synopsis/whatever like a creative document, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life trying to make IT perfect and never finish the goddamn book. Invariably, I'll get something figured out in the outline and then when I go to write on the book, things go off in a completely different direction, usually a much better direction than the outline was going. Then I'm in the position of having to edit the outline to reflect the book (so that I can proceed on the outline without getting confused) -- so it's got to be something short and sweet. It can't be this going-on-ten-thousand-words tome that it's shaping up to be. Must. Be. Succinct. Save my powder for the main gig, don't waste it all on the prep.
MP Guest Post: Alafair Burke
12 hours ago
out-line, n. or v.: nightmare, insecurity, making plans for things you think you should write but probably will never get to, imagining what the NYTBR will excerpt for their rave review, etc.
ReplyDeleteI relate to your frenzied state. I have sometimes been known to write an outline after finishing something, just to figure out the structure. I envy writers who don't worry about it, famously, like Elmore Leonard, realizing that I fall between that extreme and that of John Irving, who claims that he doesn't start writing until he knows everything that goes into the book, including the very last line. No way I could go there.
"I have sometimes been known to write an outline after finishing something, just to figure out the structure."
Delete^This, in spades. It's like I gotta get up above the book and write ABOUT it, to really see it.
I wonder why we are so impressed by people who can just do it by the seat of their pants? Maybe we figure they've got a direct line to The Gods or something.