by the seat of my pants

I want to outline in the worse way. I love to outline. Outlines look so cool, and with a word processors, it’s so easy. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways to procrastinate that I know, especially if you are me, because I know I’ll never finish one.

I’ve tried writing software. New Novelist, It’s a good program. I got it off EBay. I used it for about a week, then forgot about it.

The Cadillac of writing software; in my humble opinion, is
yWriter4. It’s got some neat bells and whistles. A story board, an outline feature, a rating chart, a daily word count target dowidget, individual chapter features, a word usage counter, a view point tracker, and more. Best of all, it is absolutely free. Check it out at the above link, the website is quite interesting as well.

Here’s what I always fall back on. It's rustic and home spun. Good old Microsoft Excel worksheet. I got the idea from Randy Ingermanson. If you haven’t read about his Snowflake Method, here’s the website, Snowflake Method. Even so, it’s still a post-outline, but with my lack of consistency, or until I get my undiagnosed ADD under control, that's long for early onset dementia, it’s the best I’m going to be able to do. It’s called seat of the pants writing.