In college, I was set against using outlines for stories. Especially, for writing short stories. I liked to write “organically,” as it’s called, by the seat of your pants, letting the words and ideas and plot lines unravel as you go. I tried that for four years while juggling work and school, and guess what? I still haven’t written that novel. I think there is a reason for it. I think when it finally gets written it will be at the right time. It will have happened exactly as it should have happened. That’s why I started picking up on some hints recently about outlining stories. After a night of writing that ultimately ended with me deciding that I needed to restart, yet again, my opening chapter while in the middle of brushing my teeth, I took to Twitter, like a lot of people do when they feel themselves resigning.
“Maybe I should write out an outline of my chapters before tackling the actual writing. I mean, maybe there really is something to that.”
In which case, a couple of fellow bloggers responded in support of the outline, saying it helped them to organize and not forget stuff. But before that, was the article in The Writer Magazine written by an author of 40+ books who, more or less, wrote an ode to the outline. He stated that there are many benefits to having an outline written before starting your story. But the one reason that stuck out to me most was written in a blog post by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn. It wasn’t even a main point, just an “oh, by the way,” point, really, but it gave me an idea.
You see, every year since I left for college, I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo. That is National Novel Writing Month in November, in case you didn’t know. For three years, I didn’t participate. I always felt like I had too much going on: school, work, homework, having a social life. Then, last year, I decided I would give it a go with my book during November. But, of course, I let myself quit. I was going to school full-time, working full-time, doing homework, more or less, full-time. I thought those were fairly good reasons NOT to work on a novel.
But, here it is: the school year succeeding my graduation. I’m still working full-time and have an editorial internship that I go to about once a week, but there are no full-time classes or overwhelming homework, and I have since learned that having a social life is not as important as it may appear, even though it is enormously fun. What matters is spending time with the people who are close to your heart and executing your God-given talents to do good in the world. And in order to get there, I’ve decided that maybe I should give up on this whole “organic” business, even though it works for some writers, and try another method that may work wonders. So, I’ve decided to use this outline called The Snowflake Method. It is one that I’ve seen and even tried to use before, but never went through with the whole outline, because of aforementioned impartiality to them.
However, It occurred to me today, that perhaps the best course of action is to use the rest of the month, considering I have run across a lot of helpful articles and advocates of the story outline, to write up my own outline for my book, and then use it as a guide to write my book during NaNoWriMo. Maybe I won’t get the whole thing written, maybe I’ll write it all and decide it’s not at all what I wanted it to be like, but at least I’ll have something to work with, something to build from to make it better and, hopefully, publishable. Not to mention, writing a whole book in a month is quite a challenge. It is probably the ultimate goal next to giving up cigarettes. A blogger friend of mine, Melissa, who blogs at Press Play, just wrote a post about all of the goals she’s accomplished over the last few years, and it is inspiring and amazing to see everything she’s crossed off her list. And she even made new lists along the way! I thought if she could accomplish a lot of her goals while adding new ones and holding down three jobs and school, then I should be able to do NaNoWriMo.
I’ve already started work on The Snowflake Method. So far, I have a one-sentence summary of my book that makes it sound like a dodgy Lifetime movie, but…it’s a start.