https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4rINyIlUKg
I found the video inspiring and wanted to share it.
The video poses the following question to kick things off.
What kinds of writing goals have you made or been told you should make?
Many people adhere to the belief that in order to be a proper writer, one must first create a very concise outline with bullet points and sub bullet points and bullet points for each of the sub bullet point. Said outline must read like a grand study of the Epic of Gilgamesh in its clarity and detail.
I don’t write like that.
For most of my life, I felt like something was wrong with me because I don’t write like that.
When I was younger, I was the kind of writer who doesn’t outline at all. I made a few loose notes here and there. Mostly I just sat down and started writing. At this point in my life, that method only works for projects like recovery writing. It doesn't work for fiction projects. Nevertheless, I'm still not a super concise outliner who takes a month to build an amazing epic outline. Doing that leads to analysis paralysis.
When it comes to writing fiction, I fall solidly into the plantser category most of the time. I make about 10,000 words' worth of notes. What I end up with is by no means an epic, beautiful outline. At this point in the process, I do go AI assisted. I feed my notes to Claude and say, “Claude, arrange my notes in a concise, easy to follow outline. “ For tasks like this, I appreciate AI assistance. I have many overarching criticisms of AI, but that’s an essay for another time.
The only place I have ever used the super-concise, precise outline format with the bullet points of bullet points to good advantage is when writing academic essays and research papers. I haven't written one of those in years. There are certain academic subjects I might like to cover at some point, but I don't know if I'll ever have time to.
Precise outline, a few (or a lot of) notes, or no outline at all, write the way that works for you, not the way that someone else tells you you're supposed to.
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