The case of the missing outline
Jan. 20th, 2005 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eimarraI've been driving myself crazy this week searching for the outline to my novel. It wasn't a fabulous outline. There were thirteen major plot points that I wanted to hit over the course of the novel. I wrote it up last year, but set it aside (holidays, travel cross-country, and all that).
I started working on Lise's Story (working title only) seriously last week. The beginning -- 4,200 words -- was easy. I even have a fairly detailed secondary outline of what will be happening over the next couple chapters. I just want some idea of the point I'm aiming for.
I know the end of the book: despair, hope, moving on. To get from point A to point B, though, I'd like a bit more of a road map. Right now, I feel like I've mapped from San Francisco to Reno of a drive to Boston. (First take the 80 to the 37 to the 29 to go to Napa, come back down the 29 and cut across on the 12, go down to the 4 on the 5, take the 89 to the 88 and then up the 395. . . . It's not a straight line by any stretch of the imagination. It's also rather impossible with passes closed and avalanche dangers this year.) I can map out each leg of the journey as long as I know which cities I'm planning to use as stopping points.
I know that griping about it here isn't going to help me find it. My choices are limited to 1) go without, 2) keep looking, or 3) write up a new itinerary. I'm going with the fourth choice right now, which is to write at least something based on the detailed outline segment I have. After I've given my brain a bit of a rest, I'll go back to looking. If I haven't found it by the end of the week, I'll have to go with option three.
Okay, enough with the procrastination by blogging about writing and on to the actual writing.
I started working on Lise's Story (working title only) seriously last week. The beginning -- 4,200 words -- was easy. I even have a fairly detailed secondary outline of what will be happening over the next couple chapters. I just want some idea of the point I'm aiming for.
I know the end of the book: despair, hope, moving on. To get from point A to point B, though, I'd like a bit more of a road map. Right now, I feel like I've mapped from San Francisco to Reno of a drive to Boston. (First take the 80 to the 37 to the 29 to go to Napa, come back down the 29 and cut across on the 12, go down to the 4 on the 5, take the 89 to the 88 and then up the 395. . . . It's not a straight line by any stretch of the imagination. It's also rather impossible with passes closed and avalanche dangers this year.) I can map out each leg of the journey as long as I know which cities I'm planning to use as stopping points.
I know that griping about it here isn't going to help me find it. My choices are limited to 1) go without, 2) keep looking, or 3) write up a new itinerary. I'm going with the fourth choice right now, which is to write at least something based on the detailed outline segment I have. After I've given my brain a bit of a rest, I'll go back to looking. If I haven't found it by the end of the week, I'll have to go with option three.
Okay, enough with the procrastination by blogging about writing and on to the actual writing.
