I have to type. My brain goes so fast that my pencil can't keep up but my fingers on the keyboard seem to do okay. As for plotting it out, outline, etc. When the muse is with me, it just flows out. When she's gone, it doesn't matter how much I plan, nothing good will come of it. I have learned not to force it; she will come again, no matter how long her recesses last.

Each one of us has a different process...the challenge is to step back, understand, and embrace. There is no right or wrong answer.

If you can see it all in your head before you start then who needs and outline?

If that isn't a strong suit, outlines help tremendously.

The most important thing for me is to get to the end so I can look at the work from a dispassionate observer's point of view. It's only then that I can tell if I'm full of it, or if I'm brilliant. When I'm in the middle I can't be subjective.

Hope that helps.

First of all, I say humbly that I'm not a fiction writer. I can't claim to be any kind of expert; but in my experience, if something haunts you and gives you goose bumps, start writing THAT and see where it leads. Works for visual arts and music, too.

I like the writing by hand thing--can't stand the idea that I wouldn't be able to write if I couldn't get to the machine.

However, it's also true that the machine can get the words down wonderfully faster and makes editing much easier, too. I marvel at how Melville and Dickens and Tolstoy and Flaubert and George Eliot managed to produce their novels.

I often start serious pieces of fiction in emails to friends. I'll be chatting and all of a sudden, an idea hits me and I'll write a paragraph or two. If I like the idea, I copy and paste to a new file and name it. I'll go back to it a few days later and read it. If it still hits me, I will pursue it.

Many other works come to me when I am resting or sleeping. I will pursue a story line as a dream or daydream but only to get a fix on the characters. Actual lines of narrative or dialogue come later.

I never write a first draft on paper. I know that draft is just that - rough copy. I don't even print out a copy until about the third of fourth draft. Then, I pencil corrections on printed hardcopy so I can review them before I use them. By then, if the story hasn't been discarded, the number of changes and the type of changes is reduced to nits. Sometimes, a change is worse than the original and I like to see both together before choosing at the end of the process.

Most of my published work is nonfiction but it is the root of many of my fictional stories. Out of real people came characters. Many of those characters are idealized versions of people. The flaws are suited to the story rather than coming out of real life. The personas are often composites. AS a practicing therapist, I have more potential characters in my head than most people know real people. People with problems are grist for the fiction mill because fiction is composed of people facing issues and sometimes, the character eats the tiger and sometimes the tiger eats the character.

First drafts are not stories. They are structures. It is only after they are read that all the flaws in the structure begin to appear and then alterations are made to tighten the story and improve narrative and dialogue. No one ever wrote a first draft that was publishable. When I post something here, I set the same standards for myself. It is the best I can do to that point with the material. I always take knowledgable suggestions and often they give a final thrust to the work.

A writer satisfied with a first draft is saying that he or she believes that what came out was perfect in its conception. Often, when that kind of writer is critiqued, he or she sets up a caterwauling that can be heard across the state when issues are questioned. Some won't even change a spelling mistake! I kid thee not. But, who am I to dispel an illusion? I have no need to be castigated for giving an opinion. So, I often don't. But I will not lie just to say something nice. I'd rather just stay out of it than say something I believe to be untrue.

I have to have the complete story written out in my head before I can put anything on paper. One of the reasons I write is because stories get trapped in my head and if I write them down, they leave (which makes my brain much quieter). If I start writing before story is finished, it's no longer in my head so I don't work on it any more and I can't figure out what happens next.

Not that things don't change while I'm writing but at least I know where I'm headed.

Also, I don't write from beginning to end. I tend to write the first three chapters, then I skip around to whatever scene interests my brain at that point. So, if I don't have the whole story written before I start that, the ending often doesn't match the beginning (Like characters names, sexes, personalities completely change.)

That's how it works for me. I know a lot of authors are who start with a basic idea and go from there.

There are so many different approaches shared here - none absolutely requiring a written outline, as such. Thank you. I feel so much better now.

It's interesting, learning how people go about it in their own way.

I like to start by writing some scenes and some basic plot points out by hand. I just like the feel on pen (fountain pen for me) on paper and it's easier to throw notes in the margins and just write.

After that, I usually start on the computer and I don't consult what I had written by hand until after I'm done with the story.

Then I gloss back over the hand written stuff and pick and choose the things I like to add back in that I may have forgotten.

Then comes the merciless final edit. Cut, cut, cut.

Ultimately I really like writing with a goal in mind, but I don't like to be a slave to the goal or even to the plot points I had laid out previously.

Jim