Katherine Mankiller

Holy hand grenades, Batman!

I generally think of myself as bad at plot. Maybe I think this because I sometimes end up writing a first draft in which I follow a character around a setting and nothing happens to him or her. (This is generally what's wrong with the hurricane story, by the way--I followed Chinequa around for 10,000 words, and lots of stuff happened, but there wasn't really, you know, plot.) That happens sometimes when you're a pantser, and apparently I think with my fingers sometimes--sometimes I just need to follow a character around and type.

I feel like I made a lot of plotty breakthroughs in my Outline of d00m. I still don't have anything really resembling an ending, but, you know. I have time to come up with wacky things like endings, especially since I now have what I think are fairly logical, interesting, and conflicty beginning and middle.

Wow. I may actually push this novel out of the ditch by the side of the road yet.