Rebel Writer
I don’t outline. There! I said it. In fact, I usually write off the cuff and rearrange later. Ever since 8th grade English class when the teacher taught (more like forced ) us to outline with Roman numerals no less, I felt boxed in. It clipped the wings on my pen.
Flash 35 years into the future as an ahem mature college student, and the professors still want us to outline our essays. In English 101 that first summer, I froze.
“I can’t write that way,” I told her.
Luckily in college, they are more laid back so I did my usual brain dump then cut and pasted later. It just works for me.
The same thing happens with too many writing rules. As I write this now, I have a big research paper in the works. It’s the “endgame” you might say, the last hurrah before graduating with a liberal arts degree in professional writing!
To help us with our paper, Professor V just threw some arsenals at us: Helpful gems as they were, these heavy armored definitions of paragraphs, construction tips, and other articles feel like a paperweight. True, I am a somewhat advanced writer in our class of “young' ens” and while I love learning new tips and take any refreshers I can get, I feel trapped—sluggishly ensnared in a net spiked with limits.
So all I can do is digest enough to whet my appetite and bite through the crosshatched prison.
I don’t even employ much structure to my book writing, I’m usually typing as I go, not sure where the adventure —or muse— will take me. But that's not what “real writers” do, right?
I signed up for a creative writing class in 2016 so I could learn the “proper” way to do things. This is it, I thought. I will finally learn how to outline. But our class was more about being free—even aghast—breaking the rules! It took a bit to undo the glue of Grammar in me. Not abandon it completely, just relax the stiff pants of its starchy cousin. I enjoyed the freedom and unleashing my inner word nerd was liberating. I reclaimed who I used to be. So maybe not every writer needs an organized regime after all.
(If you're a writer who does and outlines work for you, awesome! You probably are a much faster writer than me, and I'm a jealous.)
But feeling giddy, I prefer the crime of tossing outline bullets out the window. My crazy path of writing like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is how I’m wired. I don’t even judge successful writing days by word counts either! ( I know, what an outlaw!)
So off into my rebel writing world I go. But every once in a while I do know a direction I want to take or ideas I don’t want to forget so I’ll jot them down for later.
Sometimes I'll plot out place markers so I’ll remember when I go back in and I even know how two works-in-progress will end! That's remarkable for me.
So, no, I don’t outline. It doesn’t work for me. Then again, maybe in some ways it does.
Flash 35 years into the future as an ahem mature college student, and the professors still want us to outline our essays. In English 101 that first summer, I froze.
“I can’t write that way,” I told her.
Luckily in college, they are more laid back so I did my usual brain dump then cut and pasted later. It just works for me.
The same thing happens with too many writing rules. As I write this now, I have a big research paper in the works. It’s the “endgame” you might say, the last hurrah before graduating with a liberal arts degree in professional writing!
To help us with our paper, Professor V just threw some arsenals at us: Helpful gems as they were, these heavy armored definitions of paragraphs, construction tips, and other articles feel like a paperweight. True, I am a somewhat advanced writer in our class of “young' ens” and while I love learning new tips and take any refreshers I can get, I feel trapped—sluggishly ensnared in a net spiked with limits.
So all I can do is digest enough to whet my appetite and bite through the crosshatched prison.
I don’t even employ much structure to my book writing, I’m usually typing as I go, not sure where the adventure —or muse— will take me. But that's not what “real writers” do, right?
I signed up for a creative writing class in 2016 so I could learn the “proper” way to do things. This is it, I thought. I will finally learn how to outline. But our class was more about being free—even aghast—breaking the rules! It took a bit to undo the glue of Grammar in me. Not abandon it completely, just relax the stiff pants of its starchy cousin. I enjoyed the freedom and unleashing my inner word nerd was liberating. I reclaimed who I used to be. So maybe not every writer needs an organized regime after all.
(If you're a writer who does and outlines work for you, awesome! You probably are a much faster writer than me, and I'm a jealous.)
But feeling giddy, I prefer the crime of tossing outline bullets out the window. My crazy path of writing like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is how I’m wired. I don’t even judge successful writing days by word counts either! ( I know, what an outlaw!)
So off into my rebel writing world I go. But every once in a while I do know a direction I want to take or ideas I don’t want to forget so I’ll jot them down for later.
Sometimes I'll plot out place markers so I’ll remember when I go back in and I even know how two works-in-progress will end! That's remarkable for me.
So, no, I don’t outline. It doesn’t work for me. Then again, maybe in some ways it does.
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