Writing Every Day Continued

I realize that in creating this post it will start to sound a bit like the journaled ravings of a woman that writes her way into madness.  But it can't be helped.

I'm now making headway on the first work I've started completely from scratch since the newly established writing every day goal.  On our last episode I was writing every day and finishing up a work I already started and outlined.

I'm not a huge fan of extremely detailed outlines as I think it sucks the fun out of writing and is unnecessary for shorter works.  But I did recognize the necessity of organizing my thoughts and staying on track.  So pre-writing-every-day I would jot down major plot point that I wanted to occur in each chapter.

And this worked quite well when I was on my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.  With basically 48+ hours between writing sessions I needed those little reminders when I sat down at the computer to get me back into the zone.  Subtle points that I wanted to bring up more than once as the story unfolded would otherwise be lost.

Now in this new writing every day era the outline was the first thing to go.  And what's strange is that it wasn't even a conscious decision.  In the past I would start a story to see where it was going and then make an outline after the first two chapters or so to map out the rest of it.  I'm about halfway through this new work and it just occurred to me that I neither have an outline nor do I need one.

The lack of organization seems like it would be unnerving but it's really not.  The act of putting words on a page every day keeps the story constantly fresh in my mind.  I never lose the zone because I'm always in it.  Consequently my characters are becoming more real to me.  For lack of a better way to phrase this, writing a story is becoming more like describing friends and less like a detached scenario I put my Sims through.

It's unclear to me if these psychological changes are actually improving the quality of my writing or not.  I suppose time and reader feedback will answer that one.

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