My outline for the novel codenamed Lizardfic is currently 5008 words. That’s longer than most of my short stories. This is more outlining than I’ve ever done for any project, ever. On the other hand, stalled novel, yo. Horrible feeling. Must unstall novel. I’m probably going to outline even more, until I am half-mad with outlining. It’s not that I don’t like writing from an outline, it’s that I really suck at outlining. Hopefully, this will help.
In other news, if you’ve heard Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit is an excellent book, you heard right. I’m already a Twyla Tharp fan–my sister is a dancer–and she has a lot of advice for creative people of any discipline. It’s very applicable to writers. If you don’t want to buy it, go to your local public library or bookstore and fondle it. Trust me. I’ve been reading slowly through it, and finished it today.
I’m not sure if Thomas A. Limoncelli’s Time Management for System Administrators is as applicable to writers, but it is applicable to people with day jobs (especially scary devil monastery day jobs) who want to have time to write, so there you go.
Your outline for Lizardfic is now as long as my entire NaNoNovel for this year. 😉 That 50,000 word finish line is looking pretty far away, but I’m going to keep plugging away. It would be nice if life would cooperate just a little, though.
Misha
I considered doing Lizardfic as a NaNovel, but no. I’m still outlining like a crazy woman. It’s still missing quirky little things like… an end.
And I so hear you on the life not cooperating. Good luck!