Writing Process

Afternoon,

I don't know if you guys even care to discuss it, but Michael Vick apologized today for his part in the dog-fighting ring. Do you think he was sincere? Can he resurrect his career and/or rebuild a positive image?

I wanted to follow up on last week's discussion of conflict with a quick note on plotting. I'm working on my second novel, a haunted love story set on a ranch in Eastern Oregon. The impetus for the plot came from a news article I read about wolves reclaiming habitat in the Blue Mountains. I wrote what felt like a great set of five chapters, and now I look up and it's two-thirds of the way done (to the first draft-though I revise the previous day's writing with each new session).

The character and setting details come to me at all times of the day, so I subsequently accumulate scraps of paper with notes on them. The end table near my bed is crammed full of them. On Wendigo, I sketched out a writing schedule and outlined the last fifteen chapters. I haven't felt the need to do that on this work in progress.

So I'm curious. How much time do you spend in organizing? At what point of the writing process do you do this (early or part-way through)? How many of you just "grip it and rip it," as Roy McAvoy says in the underrated film Tin Cup?

I ask because the seed of a real dilly of an idea is germinating in the back of my mind for novel three. I'm happy to keep building on my WIP, but man, I'm excited to sit down and draft a plot outline for this next one.

To plot or not to plot (and if so, how?). That is the question...