writing

My relationship with outlines has changed as I've gotten older and have moved onto a different leg of my journey as a writer.

I absolutely didn't outline when younger. And I DON'T think that was wrong for me. I have some strong "rules follower" tendencies, and at that age I very much saw an "outline" as an immutable set of rules to follow.

I absolutely hated outlines--and I think it's because I had an instinctive understanding that if I gave into my rules-following nature so early, it'd cripple my writing. I was so new to writing I didn't know my limits or the shape of what sort of writing I COULD do, so to map that out, I had to explore out in the "wilds" to see for myself why one thing worked and why the other didn't. I had to tinker. I had to mess around, and fail, and succeed, and fail.

But because my inner push to follow "rules" as so strong at that age, I just kind of knew if I did outlines, it would cut me off from a lot of possibilities for that tinkering and exploration because my own brain would prevent me from erasing parts of the outline and redoing them if I got "stuck". I was very, very prone to fixating on stuff if I felt there was a rule related to it that I HAD to follow. And that's a liability with writing.

So I kind of brain-hacked my way around that part of my own nature. I knew my brain had a certain problem, so I went around it.

It's really only after I've truly learned what my abilities and limits are (by spending decades and millions of words exploring those limits) that outlining has become useful. But I really, really needed the foundation of KNOWING my own abilities to be in place first before outlines became useful.

So I don't "regret" or feel like I did something "wrong" to avoid outlines when younger. I think at the time I knew exactly how I needed to nurture my writing, even if it ran counter to popular advice (which often includes "outline").

But now that I'm in a different part of my journey, I'm much more able to utilize outlines without the "rules-following" part of my brain hyper-focusing on the rule and getting stuck in a rut or hole.