A lot of folks get really hung up on outlines.

I know. I’m one of those lot of folks.

I was a liberal arts major.  I learned to write essays, dagnabbit — thesis statement, three supporting points, conclusion.  Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you said.

And you always start off with an outline.

A lot of people write that way, too.  They build an elaborate outline — or even a sketchy outline — of the action.  It starts at A, then B and C happen. After that, we have the plot twist of D, rising action in E, the climax at F, the denouement of G, and the concluding paragraphs of H.

You want to know where you’re going before you go.  I understand.  I want to go to AAA and pick up the road maps, the trip-tix, and figure out where we’re staying each night and make reservations well in advance.

Sure, not all writers do that.  Rex Stout, the author of the Nero Wolfe books, simply sat down and wrote them.  No drafts.  No outlines.  He started typing, and when the story was finished, he packed up the manuscript and sent it to his publisher.

Yeah, right.  Those kind of folks are crazy-talented.  If I want my story to make sense, it’s gotta have a full outline first.

But folks who are writing in NaNoWriMo (self included) keep forgetting something.  The journey doesn’t have to fit an established itinerary.  It doesn’t have to hits points A, B, C, D, etc., in that order, for pre-ordained reasons. It can, sure. But it doesn’t have to.

Some folks don’t take vacations that way. They maybe have a duration — a time limit, a number of miles, an appointment to be at place X on date Y.  But beyond that, they just … drift …

An interesting sign along the way? Let’s check it out!  A national park over there?  Road trip!  A cool looking hotel an hour before we thought we would stop? Why not?

And talk to the locals!  Where’s a good place to eat. Any worthwhile sightseeing to do around here?  Hey, ever heard of the the legend of that ghost?  Where is that town, anyway?  I was looking for some authentic trinkets of some sort — do you know where I could find them?

They drift. They ramble. They take each day as it comes.  They have a goal, sure … probably … but between here and there, it’s where life takes them.

That works in storytelling, too, especially NaNoWriMo.  It’s fine to have that goal — a certain wordcount, a climactic scene you can so plainly see in your head — but how you get there, at least in NaNoWriMo, can be completely open.

A real example.  When last I left my protagonists, they had left a body riddled with bullets behind.  Plot-wise, outline-wise, expectation-wise, they would get a good night’s sleep, and then proceed on to follow the clues they had picked up.

Except it was kind of a traumatic experience, it turned out.  They needed to process it. There’s a day’s worth of writing.

And then it suddenly occurs to me that someone’s going to find that body.  And one of the protagonists is going to be implicated.  Which means a visit from the police.  There’s another day of writing.

The arrested character gets dragged downtown and questioned.  There’s another day.

The other character is going to start following up on those clues … but, hey, word of that arrest has gotten out, and that’s started another interested party or two taking action, which gets that character caught up in a fist fight and an arson attempt.  Yet another day.

Which, then, leads the police to question said other character, with malice and prejudice and agenda.  There’s a day.

Meanwhile, the arrested protagonist is still being questioned. With a rubber hose. And then the lawyer finally shows up.  And the arrested protagonist starts spinning a tale for lawyer and cops as to how their assumption of guilt is not accurate (though, in fact, it is). Yet another  day.

Count them up. I haven’t advanced the outline plot one iota.  Yet there are six days of rambling narrative, chewing up full amounts of word count … and, best of all, not only are they chewing up word count, but they are advancing the story in a way I hadn’t anticipated, building characters, complicating the narrative, adding challenges, etc.

Does that mean I won’t hit my ultimate destination? I have no idea.  From a NaNoWriMo standpoint,  I’m mostly after 50K words.  The last two don’t have to be “The End.”

From another standpoint, 50K is more like a long novelette. For publication, you really want something half again longer, if not twice the length or more. Heck, if it’s overlong, it can always be trimmed back.  This is actually the second year I’m working on the same tale (the gunfight and corpse were close to the end of what I wrote last year), and if I end up with a 100K word manuscript, due to some creative meandering, I will consider it a fine development.

So … outlining is good.  Knowing the structure of the story is good. But being willing to stop and smell the roses along the way is also good, and letting the story line drift a bit is not only NaNoWriMo effective (for boosting word count), it can lead to some interesting stuff happening that you never expected to have happen.

And that’s a good thing. Even if you have a destination in mind.

I was reminded today of one of my favorite writing quotes, by Roger Zelazny.  Simple, practical, and perfect for NaNoWriMo:

I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you’re going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You’re going to say “Oh boy!” and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That’s 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn’t goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I’ve moved as far as I have.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995), Interview, Phlogiston #43 (1995)

Maureen Johnson does a great post on THE FEAR OF THE FIFTY-THOUSAND. One note:

And 50,000 words, though it seems like an UNGAINLY number, isn’t even as much as you think. It SOUNDS big, but that’s 1,666 words a day. That’s not a huge number. That’s a few emails and a couple of texts. It only seems big because you’ve put an expectation on yourself that you can now THROW AWAY. This is not a text. No one will tase you in the neck if you write the wrong thing, because YOU CANNOT WRITE THE WRONG THING. Give yourself a chance to get it wrong. You’ll get it right later.

Well, 1,667/day is a bit more than a few emails and a couple of texts (even from someone like me, who writes overly long emails at the office), but it is quite doable … especially if you don’t get into a lather about it having to be the perfect 1,667 words.

(I do get into such a lather, but that’s a problem, not an advisable course of action.)

The next step is to write some words. ANY WORDS. Something has to be on the page. It’s totally okay if what goes on that page are the WRONG WORDS, as long as they are SOME WORDS, because you can work with the WRONG WORDS. A lot of what you are doing at the start is blowing some of the crap out of your head and knocking the fear out of the way. You are PUNCHING FEAR IN THE FACE. You’ve already got it on the floor. Now KICK IT. Seriously. KICK IT.

Plus, pictures of cute owls.