Progress on Ichabod’s going great. The switch to first person is working out well, and the book feels much better. Even more interesting to me, I’m discovering that it’s possible to have a plot outline and still feel spontaneous. Well, it’s not as if my plot outline was ultra specific, but still, I have a plan of what’s to happen each step of the way. My fear had been that I wouldn’t want to write the book if I had an outline. I enjoy finding out what happens as I write it. But now that I’m trying this, I still find excitement in finding out the specifics–in actually writing sections even when I already know what happens. Does that make sense? Add to this the added benefit of being able to build to several different climaxes over the course of the novel–which will in turn (hopefully) make it so that I have much less rewriting), and I’m beginning to think that this is the way I’m going to go from here on out.
So far, so good.
I found exactly the same thing when I started outlining. I still find joy in figuring out the specifics (i.e. the outline says April will escape from the laboratory in this chapter, but HOW will she do it?) but it saves me the grand headache of not knowing where the book is going. It made the novel writing process much easier for me.
The revision process, however…long rant forthcoming. I better put it in my own journal.