insert clever title here: Outlines

I have always hated the idea of outlines.

They stifle creativity, I thought. They're annoying/boring/too hard to write. They don't serve any purpose.

Wrong.

I've recently learned that not only are outlines not stiflers of creativity, they are kind of necessary. Maybe you don't start off with one, but you're going to need one eventually because novels are LONG, and it's hard to keep track of stuff (especially for me). And they provide structure and guidance, which, on a big, long project such as a whole novel, is really helpful. The best part is, you don't have to follow it if you don't want to. In fact, you might not make one until you're quite a ways in.

Case in point: during my most recent project, when I finally broke down and actually wrote an outline, I was already part of the way through draft 2.5. But it made everything after it so easy I'm starting the next Nanowrimo with one. What it did was give me a roadmap. I'd always started novels with only a hazy idea of where I was going... okay, let's be real here, I'd pretty much do the noveling equivalent of closing my eyes, spinning in a circle, stopping when I got dizzy, and setting off in the direction I was facing. I almost never had an ending, and odds were against me having anything more than a sketch of a character or two, a basic setting, and maybe a conflict. I would discover the territory as I went along, and while that can be terribly exciting, it's more often boring because you can't move half the time, having no idea where you're going. I'd get stuck a lot. With an outline, on the other hand, things were much smoother, and when I did get stuck, I could just look at the outline, and be able to tell what the story needed in this spot here and now, and not have to go blindly forward and then backtrack several times. Instead of stifling my creativity, it helped inspire it.

P.S. I've heard of an extreme version of this, and I've included it mainly for your curiosity. I've never tried it, and while it sounds like it would work in theory, I think I am much too inexperienced to try it myself yet. (Also, it sounds really hard.)