How I Plan To Adjust My Outline Process – The Climb #632

Sunday 15^th November 2020

I constantly work on process.

It’s not that I rigidly stick to it. My approach to process has always been to find what shortcuts I use and make them the process. It means I constantly refine. There’s times when I make myself stay rigidly to it by way of an experiment to see if it is more effective. Other times I notice where my process breaks down and make adjustments accordingly.

There’s no one way to write. I know plenty of writers who get annoyed by writing advice, thinking it a distraction from the actual act of writing. But I’m fascinated by it, although at the same time, not crippled by it.

Every writer’s process is individual. What works for some writers, doesn’t work for others. I’m fascinated by it and love hearing the nitty gritty of how other writers work.

I don’t believe in divine inspiration, rather that the media you consume helps your brain smash ideas together. But I also don’t believe books get written by brute force and ignorance. Writers might not see the rules and tactics they are using, but they are there, however unoptimized.

And when I say optimized I’m not talking talking about compressing a book’s creation into the shortest time possible, I’m talking about the most efficient for the individual author.

My NaNoWriMo novel this year has been an experiment. I’ve found it really tough. I tend to think of NaNoWriMo as my R&D. It’s where I will try experiemental stuff, and this year it’s been about process.

What I wanted to do was write a novel using some strict elements of craft, specifically when it comes to plotting. I outlined a novel in 5 days and that was great. Except when it came to write it…

There’s many things at play here. The US election depressed me about the world for a time. It made it difficult to write The Climb as well, and I’ve only just caught up. There’s also the fact that it’s been a long time since I’ve written a first draft novel in a new world. There’s massive amounts of insecurity that comes with that. I’m caught up in my own head a lot, battling some of my own writing demons.

But there’s also the third factor. And this one is a realisation. I need to let the outline sit before I write the first draft.

I have a friend who writes a first draft and then dives straight back into editing. I can’t do that. Like many writers I need to emotionally detach from the story before coming back to it. I think I’ve done enough rewrites to know this is true for me. It’s not being a case of being lazy.

I need to come back to the story neutrally and fall in love with it again. It’s the same reason why I want to write a first draft or do an edit fast. When I do so I’m in a set mindstate. Nothing throws me as a writer more than my circumstances changing around me mid-draft. I become a slightly different person, changed by the experiences. I’m no longer the same writer who started that draft.

But conversely, I want to be a different writer when I come to edit. I need to look at that story with new eyes, to see it fresh. The book has to sell itself to me again. It has to work.

And the thing I’ve learnt this NaNoWriMo is that the same needs to happen between an outline and a first draft.

Ideally the way I work is to rotate projects. So I move between different projects at different stages. I’ve done that in the past, writing hundreds of thousands of words as I move from the second draft of one novel to the first draft of another. The outline is another stage but it needs to be separated from the First Draft.

That way just as ideas for a new novel come to me as I write the first draft on this, so it should be that I’m ready to outline it by the time I finish the first draft. Not only does it make efficient use of downtime between a first and second draft but it also means that when I come to do the edit or rewrite, it’ll come back to me fresh.

Again, this is just my process and I don’t expect it to hold true for others. But going forwards, this should help me plan and be more efficient with my writing time.