Why I love outlining and also why I shelved an old manuscript

I know some writers love writing organically and swear by it, but in my experience, all it leads to is a giant, incoherent mess. I wrote my first manuscript (which I shelved) organically. I thought out the main points of the story ahead of time and had that big picture in my head as I wrote it, and I was absolutely in love with the characters and plot. I worked at it for six months, bleeding my brain dry, until that amazing moment when I was able to put down the last sentence. I printed out the monstrosity and let it sit on my desk for two weeks, proudly reveling in my creation. After I had had enough time to sit with it, I picked it up again and read through it. 

Here is what I realized: the plot, while still awesome, was full of hundreds of little moving parts that, instead of forming a working machine, looked more like a pile of scrap metal. The beginning and middle were slow and dragged on for an eternity. One of the character's name changed halfway through (oops). The ending was incredibly rushed (probably because of coffee-fueled excitement on those last few days). The reader got slapped with a crisis, deaths, and other craziness without any time to breath. 

Of course, first drafts are meant to be thrown out, so I got to the revisions. I went through packs of red pens and reams of paper as I hacked away at my manuscript, draft after draft. And when I was finished: It was good. It wasn't great. It was adequately paced and the different elements were more in sync with each other. It was an enormous step from where I began, but it was still very far from where I wanted it to be. I had a choice - keep going with that manuscript that I was starting to lose faith in, or move on to a new project, let things stew, and revisit it later.

I decided that I wanted to keep going, even though the smart move probably would have been to move on. Then my laptop got stolen. I was on draft ten or eleven and the last draft I had backed up was five. Guys - back everything up. I cannot even begin to describe how insanely devastated I was. But, to put a positive spin on it, maybe that was the push I needed to put that manuscript to the side and get on with something else.

I had my first idea for EOA (which was wayyy different to the version that went to print) and I started jotting some stuff down. I didn't go into it with the intention to outline, but I did just to organize the story better in my head. Because of this, I feel I was able to allow for the evolution of the ideas I had without going through rewrites. The point to which my rough draft of EOA got to was the level that my old manuscript wasn't able to reach until seven or eight drafts in. 

Nevertheless, EOA needed a lot more work, but it was a much more enjoyable process than with my other novel because the entire time I was writing, I had a clear map of where I was going. I outlined book 2 during my revision process and was able to add in little bits of foreshadowing and questions, the resolutions to which I'm cranking out now. 

Okay, last bit about outlining - when I get stuck on one chapter, I can just hop over to another! When you outline a story ahead of time, it is a lot harder for you to get roped in by writer's block, as there should be a chapter for any emotion you might be feeling on a particular day.

So that's my advice. It's definitely not a formula, so keep an open mind and be willing to give different methods a try and do what works best for you. Also, shelving a manuscript is not the same as giving up. You can always revisit it at any time, or pull from it to add to a new story. It is not wasted time. You learn with every sentence you write. I could not have written EOA without everything I learned from my previous manuscript. And maybe, once I'm finished with the Corpus Chronicles, I'll come back to that old story with fresh eyes and more experience and pull all those loose ends together.

-Esha