1/30/06: Outlining

[davidlevine]

Word count: 3274 | Since last entry: 414

Tonight's wordcount is a complete but rather sketchy outline of the current story, trying to work in all the key points from this weekend's plot and character notes. Many missing pieces still. What is the main character's job on board ship? Need to find an org chart for the Pioneer or Voyager mission to get names of scientific specialties... would also probably be good to find and re-read the daily logs from the International Space Station, which I saw posted on the web some years ago.

Outlining at this point feels rather like... cheating? Wasting time? I feel I should be writing, i.e. producing salable words, in my limited writing time. But I know that this story's bigger than my usual and needs some planning and special attention if it's going to work.

I am envious of people who produce 1000-2000 words per day on a regular basis (though I know that many of them don't have day jobs).

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Check the Voyager Neptune Travel Guide, an excellent little book which looks somehow sadder and shabbier in its PDF-scan version.

<http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900004096_1990004096.pdf>

[davidlevine]

Wow, that's a great resource! Thanks!

[rosefox]

Hi! I'm a fellow writer who saw someone else drop your name, and thought I'd stop by. I love learning about other people's creative processes.

Outlining at this point feels rather like... cheating? Wasting time?

I'm very familiar with this feeling. I have to remind myself that it's much like quiet nights at home with my fiance where we sit on the couch with our laptops and zone out together: sure, we could be gossiping or cooking a romantic dinner or dragging each other off to bed, but developing a solid foundation of closeness is at least as important as any of the "active relationship" stuff we do.

My current WIP is set in a world so detailed that I actually put together a little wiki so that I could keep track of it. (I highly recommend PBWiki for this.) I've been soothing the writing-beast by doing little character-development vignettes while I build the world and the plot, and I think the balance has worked out pretty well. Now that I do finally have a plot and not just places and people, I may indulge myself and get started with the real writing, but I know that the longer I spend getting all my ducks in a row, the less scrambling I'll have to do later when I'm playing spot-the-contradiction.

[davidlevine]

Thanks for your comment, and for stopping by! Feel free to drop me a note any time.