To Write Organically...

When someone tells you they write organically, that is a pleasant way of saying they really don't outline in advance and that they like to let the story lead them.  Unless you think the entire "organic" thing has been co-opted by ADM and major supermarket chains and the like, because then it probably is less pleasant for you.

Anyway, I've written novel-length work both ways.  I have outlined and I have written with only the vaguest idea of where the story is going.  I'll admit that I enjoy the finish line much more when writing organically, much as a blind pilot probably enjoys having safely landed more than the sighted pilot does.

Looking at the finished novels, however, I'm not sure one way or the other increases the odds of writing a better story.  It alters the process and the author's experience, but it hardly seems to matter when looking for better.

I would argue it does impact the nature of the stories.  For example, without any sort of outline or advanced planning as in purely organic writing, there really is no way for an author to produce a complex series of foreshadows throughout the text which then culminate in a wonderful payoff ending.  An author could finish the book and then go back and add in the foreshadowing, but that's no longer organic, since not only do you have an outline pointing to the ending but you have an actual manuscript.

There is also built-in stress when writing organically.  It might be fun stress for some, comparable to bungie-jumping or walking on hot coals, but with each subsequent organically-written page, the author risks screwing up everything that came before.  While this can be true even when writing from a tight outline, the risks with an outline are lessened.  If you take a wrong turn in writing your story when you're 30 pages deep, who cares?  Most novelists will tell you that the first 30-50 pages are the honeymoon; easy and stress-free.  However, get 250 pages deep and then take the book the wrong way, and only catch it around page 300?  Ugh.  An author in that situation almost always has a flash-fantasy of chucking the whole thing out a 2nd floor window.  It'll wake you up in the middle of the night.  "What?  Really?  Did I really add a that to my novel?  I mean, why not just have the Fonz jump sharks while waterskiing?"

Now, I am DEFINITELY not a proponent of writing an outline in granite and never wavering from it. Here's how I work-  I outline on a yellow legal pad.  I don't know why it works for me.  I do NOT draft by hand, I type from the first word.  But the outline, that I do on yellow legal pad with a couple sharp pencils.  In fact, normally I'm lying down on a bed with pencils and pad, scratching notes, making arrows, crossing out, etc.  The outline for the novel will run almost three pages or so, and for heaven's sake, you won't find roman numerals or uppercase letters and other such nonsense in my outline.

As I sit at the computer and start writing, I glance at the outline.  I have a pencil ready too, because from the first day, I'll be making changes to the outline.  Sometimes I'll go a couple days of hard writing without looking at the outline and then suddenly look up and wonder, "Wait, where the hell am I?" and I'll go to the legal pad.

Typically, the end of the novel is pretty different than the original one outlined on the pad, but it's not purely organic writing.  I didn't wander through the forest.  I made choices at forks in the trails.

So, I have a VERY loose outline of the novel I'm writing now.  Broken into four stages, the novel has only a few notes per stage, but I know where I have to get my story by the end of each stage so that my characters can catch their connection to the next.

I wrote all this not because I was hoping to convert anyone to any system, nor was I even trying to help you.  I was just stalling; I was putting off going back to the novel, but I suppose I'll check that pad and see where I'm up to.