After my best friend, who is also an amazing writer and honest critic, got on my back about finally writing my novel several years ago, I have embarked on this genre. So far I have struggled with my efforts. I wrote to just write. There was no structure. No story. To quote Janet Desaulniers, my graduate school adviser, I was telling myself the story.
In 2005 I attended an amazing week-long seminar called The Art of the Story led by Tom Jenks. Tom is the editor of Narrative and a former fiction editor at The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ, and Scribners. Through his teaching, I am now outlining and am finding it very helpful as well as laborious.
Back in June I attended the Printer's Row Book Fair with my friend Vesna. One of the writers we saw was Joyce Carol Oates. Oates said that the first six weeks of planning a novel is the hardest, and I agree. Tom did tell me that it makes the writing of it more fruitful. Perhaps that is another reason she is so prolific.
I am curious how many of you writers outline your work?
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I take notes in my little black book and I talk alot about the plot with two guardian angels, my husband and my dear friend laure who usually reads the first drafts of all my work. I find outlining the book in a definite way too constraining for me...
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