Today is a day to turn my attention away, at least for a few hours, from the electoral crisis gripping our nation so I’m going to talk about my writing.

I am an outliner. I can’t tackle a long form piece of fiction without an outline. For me the critical junctions in a story must be known before I can start putting the words in a row. But my outlines are not all the same.

If I am remembering correctly my longest outline for a novel was a massive 87 pages and for my current WIP it is 21 pages.

However, as I am writing this novel it feels like there is so much more being discovered in the process that wasn’t even hinted at in the outline.

Oh, the act breaks are falling on the same major event and the plot aspects are proceeding perfectly on pace, but I am inventing and uncovering aspects I had not thought about that only arise as I try to fit myself into the character’s skin. Major emotional beats are coming from out of nowhere and with the foreknowledge of where I need to end up, I can incorporate them properly.

When I started I had a lot of trepidation about this project, it’s a genre I haven’t really written in before, its main character is a challenge, and knowing that it is very likely that someone already is holding expectations about it all pile on new levels of anxiety and yet it seems to be flowing rather nicely.

Here’s hoping that continues.