What you will see me doing on a day of writing is simply that: writing.

Because I don't like outlines. They never work for me. When I outlined my third book, Sequence (which rests in peace in my junk drawer), I thought it was going to be better because I outlined it. I had a whole bunch of details and bubble charts and graphs ready for my use.

But what happened? The novel turned out boring and truncated and hollow. I already knew what was going to happen, so the life was sucked out of me. There were no surprises. The characters were already there. They had already developed and I just had to tell the audience how, and I didn't like that. But I decided to be faithful and I plodded through the novel's 51,000 words with misery.

I decided that that outline was the worst thing ever and I gave it a ride in a trash truck.

But why was it so terrible? Why did that outline, which I spent a month and a half toiling over to make sure I had a good plan for the story, just kind of...die? I think it had to do with me being constrained and, effectively, my characters were stuck in a box. They had the limits of the outline and the chains of their character sheets wrapped around them, so I ended up with something hollow and devoid of life and joy.

I wondered if I had lost my touch, so when I set off to write the sequel to Double Life, I expected it to be really slow. And it did start that way. I began the novel mid-January and wanted to finish by mid-February.

Then, about halfway through, I stopped. I didn't want to do this anymore. I wasn't going to handle more of this dull sludge.

But fast forward to March--I remembered how I wrote my other novels, how they had felt so free and so good. I remembered that these characters were people and not furniture, and I decided to take off the imaginary pressures of stupid outlines.

I wrote the second half of Terminal Velocity in two caffeine-driven days.

So if you ask me if I outline, I will say no. Characters grow by themselves and subplots happen naturally and spontaneously. Build your plot on your characters, not vice versa, and you will find that you have a new freedom and color to your writing than you ever had before.

--Dawson Vosburg