One More Time

My last post prompted the To Outline  or Not to Outline debate again.  You can see it over at Lee Goldberg's blog.

Yes, I did make a mistake in my manuscript as I said below.  But, for me, outlining wouldn’t have prevented this.  BTW it’s all fixed and it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be.  It never is, is it?

I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it here again.  If I had to outline a book I’d be so depressed I’d never write it.  I can’t imagine that it would be interesting to do.  I’d know far too much.

And this particular book couldn’t have been outlined even if I’d wanted to do that.  I think I explained way back how I approached this one.  I picked titles of movies out of a box. This gave me a jump start for each chapter and I established characters that way.  Also story.  I stopped doing this about chapter nine or ten.  I know it sounds crazy but it worked for me and that’s the point.  Outlining obviously works for some people and not for others.  So why should there be a debate about it?

Should I say that the only way to write a novel is to pick titles or sayings out of a box?  I don’t think so.  But it’s one way.  I never did this before and most likely will never do it again. 

Now, can we give the outline thing a rest?