No. No no no no no. No.

No, I haven't written an outline for my story. In fact, I'm finding myself amazingly resistent to writing an outline. I'm reaching for that sparkly fool's gold of written thought: "How could I write an outline for something when I don't know what I'm going to write? That's dumb. And it takes more time. I'll be fine if I just write."

And you know what I already know about that? I know that outlining makes for better prose. And I'm still not doing it. I'm still not writing an ouline.

Emerson pointed out once that man tends to discard his own thoughts in favor of those already out there, already popular. That, in fact, man has many original thoughts that he doesn't realize are original just because they are already familiar to him. One might even say that man undervalues himself when he does not express these thoughts.

What does this have to do with outlining? Just pick a thought, ouline it, and write. Period. Trust yourself.

Ah...yes, well...

it's almost Halloween...I love Halloween, Samhain, mystical and magical. Cool, snapping leaves and rustling, dried grass, big abandoned houses with ghosties and ghoulies...fireplaces and glowing lights and things that go bump in the night.

I've been asked to tell a scary story...but I was thinking about it long before I was asked. My favorite, best remembered ghost story is The Monkey's Paw. Monkey's paw, monkey's paw, bring me.... Or the Brown Mountain lights - it's a mystery that's never been solved.

And that set me to thinking about the pacing of a really good ghost story, mostly short, vivid, tension building, and oh, so possibly real...so very, scarily real. A real ghost story...a novella of sorts. That might be a good topic for a November - cold and snapping and deeply darkly nightly.

Here we go again...

It's October 11. Tuesday evening. And Nanowrimo takes place this November. I'm willing to give it another shot. So I begin preparing now, thinking about how to manage my time and my interests and setting up a writing environment and all that good stuff. Time to stop reading about writing and actually doing the writing.

Here we go again...