I Hate Outlining But I Need To Know Where I'm Going...HELP!

For some reason I’ve had a lot of writers lately who’ve been really frustrated by outlining. In fact, I know very few writers who are naturals at this. They might not be a fully intuitive writer (the kind who might say they “pants”), but no outlining system has worked for them.

If this is you, take heart! There is a way.

First, look at your Process Archetype. If you’re a visual writer, then outlining as a mind-map or story-board as opposed to an Excel spreadsheet might work for you. I suggested this to two of my visual writers and they were super excited. One called it, “juicy!’

If you are character-based and music or daydreaming is a big part of your process, then try something like what Robert Olen Butler calls “Dreamstorming” in his book, From Where You Dream. I just call it “intentional daydreaming.” Set a timer, keep a notebook nearby, and daydream your next scene. If you know what you’re going to write, then let it play out. If you don’t know, then sit quietly and wait for something to arise. It could be an image, a cinema in your mind, a bit of dialogue….whatever it is, this can be how you outline an entire book.

If you’re a writer who really orients with setting, what about writing a travel guide to your world or drawing maps? I plotted my recent WIP by drawing a map of the city and then figuring out how they were going to get from their starting point to their endpoint, and then at each stop I figured out what needed to happen there in order for the characters to keep moving (or be waylaid). Travel guides helped with my fantasy books - in having to write about the world and culture, a lot of plot came to me.

If music is big for you, what about a playlist that is an outline, with each song representing a chapter?

These are just a few examples, but I hope they show you how much you can color outside the outlining lines.

How To Make My Process More Efficient

A LOT of the writers I work with and know wish their process was more efficient.

Sylvie* was frustrated because she had tons of notes all over the place: a million notebooks, notecards, scraps of paper, you name it.

The more we got to talking about her process, it was clear that even though she felt like she * should * digitize her notes or get an app or SOMETHING, the way her brain worked was on paper.

In addition to doing Morning Pages, she just loves taking notes!

We came up with two possible solutions:

1. Get something like a Remarkable 2, a device that is only for handwriting, but it’s digital, so you can organize your handwritten ideas all in one place.

2. Only use notebooks with indexes, such as the Leuchtturm. This way, she can index her notes and find them easily by scanning the index itself rather than flipping through the notebook.

Whatever she does, she’s not abandoning her process. Handwriting is how she gets into flow, it’s how ideas come to her and how she naturally organizes them. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, we simply took what’s working for her (handwriting) and eliminating the part that doesn’t (a million notebooks where she can’t find her notes).

How To Integrate Breaks Into Your Process

In one of the public workshops where I taught You Have A Process, a writer asked:

What do I do when I’m tired or hungry? Can breaks be part of our process?

Absolutely! I advised that taking breaks or getting a snack, taking a nap, doing whatever you need to do to be physically, mentally, and emotionally well in (or out) of the writer’s seat is essential. You can absolutely build it into your process.

For example, I have a writer I’ve worked with who says that part of her process is doing laundry. When she reaches a stopping point - when she’s not quite sure what to do next on the page - she gets up and does a load of laundry. The combo of physical activity and stepping away from the computer allow her mind to wander.

Wandering and rest are VERY good for a writer’s brain. Creativity is often defined as two different things coming together to make one new thing. In order for those dots to connect, we need spaciousness. Our interior spaciousness comes from rest and our general wellbeing.

In Why We Sleep author Matt Walker has much to say on the connection between rest, creativity, and problem solving. You can check out his TED talk here, or read the book!

For some, this might require a reframe. Rather than seeing taking a break as procrastination or resistance, really interrogate when you take these breaks and how they support your practice. By seeing them as an essential part of your process, you can get the most out of them and not take up creative bandwidth with unnecessary guilt.