Yeah, we’re not Birding this week. Scheduling conflicts. Not next week, either. darn that real life stuff. 🙂

And yes, I’m still working on the outline. Not steadily, or even as a first thing, but the fireman story (which doesn’t have an outline–at least on paper) is moving along swimmingly. 🙂 Right now, I’m trying to imagine an incredible annoying reporter who doesn’t come off as incredibly annoying until you really think about what he’s saying. I did it with crazy Michael in Knight, I can do it here.

It’s fascinating how much I’m learning about how my stories come into being as I poke away at this outline thing. I’m enjoying the chance to explore this, though the niggling fear that I’ll blow a story because I over-outline it is always there. I can’t say for sure yet, but I think I need to outline and write at the same time.

See, I carry my outline–or what I know if it–in my head all the time, but I can’t always see all of it. When a story shoves its way to the front of my brain–like the firefighter story just did–the outline seems to be there. Not all of it, or maybe not all at once, but a good part of the framework hangs behind my eyes at all times–at least for the active stories. I know one scene only showed up today because I realized I needed something to ease the transition from , “Ewww, get away!” to “Hmmmm.” (Okay, and it’s a fun little trip down memory lane. OMG, this story makes me miss my days riding in the ambulance.)(I’m trying to remember the dumbest call I was ever on, or maybe I should have a dramatic one? Or, honestly, maybe just a run of the mill one. Yeah, that might be a good way to shove MC2’s good qualities into MC1’s face.)

So, it’s fun adventure. I’m wondering what kind of Frankenstein’s monster I’m going to end up with at the end. And ongoing outline? A whiteboard that I’m constantly adding to and subtracting from? A Set of Scrivener folders with notes?

It’s like discovering a new world. And you know what’s really great about it all? It’s that I can feel the same rush, the same sense of unstoppable inertia that I used to feel before my husband passed away and I fell down that dark hole. At the pace that words are coming now, I think I’m fine. (Not that I don’t want to get faster, so you know I’m going to keep exploring this outlining thing. 🙂 ) But I can hardly wait to get home, to watch the words appear on the screen each night. And I think this exploration of outlining has been a catalyst in my recovery from that dark period. I’m not ready yet to tackle (and fix) things I wrote during that time, but I think I can see the time coming when I can go back to those stories and fix the things that came out of that bad time.

So even if all I get out of this is a return to what I had before, I’m okay with that.

Still going to work on the outlining, though. 😛