So, after my huge writing fail post, I left this comment as a reply on facebook and it made me think even more about whether a fail is really a bad thing:

For me, the outline isn;t set in stone so much as it’s a safety net, a map scribbled on a cocktail napkin. There are lots of details in it, but that tree landmark on the corner might be 4 blocks away instead of 1.5. It’s the idea of a tree, and once you get there, you can go somewhere else. Or maybe you talk to some weird old dude over his fence and get a shortcut that may or may not take you where you want to go.

The outline forces me to think 2, 5, 10 steps ahead, and helps me get out of the weeds when I’ve got myself good and lost. Like having to double back to the dairy fridge and get the milk that you almost left the store without but manage to come out of there with everything you need.

I keep all my notes, because some of those side stories that got created when I was writing notes for the original story can take on a life of their own. Sort of like how Last Dance Redux led to Trust Me, which led to Rider and lastly (hopefully lastly!) to Jack.

You know, now that I think about it, maybe those notes are dangerous after all….

With this in mind, I think this is where the fail may have come in: That I stopped writing notes as a safety net and started writing them to write them. They stopped being some sort of writer’s talisman to wave in the face of the Block and became, fuck…WORK! And that’s where it broke down. Where I couldn’t tuck my scribbled cocktail napkin into my pocket and just wing it, secure that the map was there.

Still writing…

There’s nothing quite like a failure, is there?

Fortunately, this is one of those good sorts of failures, where you walk away having learned something and not one of those OMFG kind of failures. This one is about my writing. Yes, yes, I’m still writing, have no fear. I’ve just had a bit of a set back based on the wish to try something that didn’t quite work out.

Under somewhat normal circumstances, I write out a full outline for a story I intend to write. Once that is done, I break it up into chapter sized chunks, writing out even more detailed outlines for what’s going to happen in a chapter. Hey, I’m a Virgo; lists kinda come with the territory. Under normal circumstances, once well armed with my piles of lists, I put them aside and just write, seeing what comes. Now this hasn’t really failed me or anything. I fly fairly well by the seat of my pants, so there was no reason to change. Other than a bit of change is sometimes a good thing.

And sometimes not so much.

This time around, I had looked to extend my written notes a step further, to the actual writing itself. Outline. Got it. Even more detailed chapter outline. Yep, got that too. At that point, rather than moving right to the keyboard where my old logical brain could get to typing, I stayed on paper, and wrote my chapters that way. It wasn’t really a bad way to go, it just never seemed to happen as fast as I’d like it to happen. In that sense, it was a fail.

So I’ve chosen to return to my tried and true method of outline-detailed chapter notes and finally, letting myself go to just write. I’m already seeing some results (in that I managed to get “Jack 4″ out at all and that chapter 5 is being written as I speak). For those that are reading, be assured that chapters will come more frequently. I haven’t forgotten you!

Your writer