Who knew?

A surprising thing happened to me last week. Well, actually a lot of surprising things happened last week—three separate family members ended up in the ER for separate ailments, for starters! Everyone's fine now, thankfully. But somehow, in the midst of it all, I discovered that I actually truly love OUTLINING!

I've long told aspiring writers to outline, though I'd never really done it myself. Rather, whenever I tried, my outlines were just LAME and WRONG. But this time around things played out differently. I think it's because I was outlining a revision, not outlining a book I haven't started yet. I'd found myself spinning my wheels for too long, wondering what I was keeping, what had to go. I'd also heard my husband tell me a gazillion times: "You need to stop and outline."

I gave in. And the outlining process brought everything into focus. Even more surprisingly, I ENJOYED doing it. So tomorrow, I will get back to the business of the actual writing/revising of the book, but with a handy outline at my side!