Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Revising and Outlining

Seems like everyone's doing it now. All of my critique group is in the midst of it, and many of the writers on the blogs I read are doing it, too.

After eating gallons of chicken noodle soup and finally starting to feel better, I've turned my thoughts to revising as well. For my finished ms., The Red Thread, it's just a matter of work. But in my current WIP, I'm stuck at about page 80.

After reading about outlining from hipwritermama, and seeing PJ Hoover's Hero's Journey outline that she used, I decided that the only way for me to become unstuck was to try out an outline.

I've not done an outline since my second ms. I used to outline everything...but then I found out that the thing I like about writing is discovering what happens to my characters...and if I outline, I figure it out without writing it...so then I don't write it.

But I'm hoping that a looser strategy than point A leads to point B leads to point C will enable me to think through this writer's block without making me bored with my own story.

Here's hoping!

3 comments:

PJ Hoover said...

But the good news is, even with an outline, there is always room to diverge. One reason why keeping it on the computer is nice; it's so easy to edit!
Have fun :)

Vivian Mahoney said...

What PJ says is so true! Good luck, Beth!

Unknown said...

Thank you! I need all the luck I can get!