I tried to start my next scene and came up against the realization that my outline was so screwed up by the places I’d wandered off to that I really couldn’t see where I was supposed to be going until I fixed it. And rather than going right to work on fixing the upcoming, I went back and outlined the latest stuff that I’d done. (Because otherwise I waste tons of time scrolling around trying to remind myself of what I did and didn’t cover yet.)
After detailing all that, I decided to look over the 4 scenes I wrote for chapter 8 and put them into the draft. (Now at 45,892 words, btw.) Then I decided that I needed to make an at-a-glance outline for what I’ve already done because the other was getting too long. (Have I ever mentioned that making the points of view of the characters different colors is the best thing ever?) Then I decided I needed to know the word counts for each chapter.
And then I couldn’t think of anything else to do to avoid looking ahead.
So I went back to the original outline and listed the things that had yet to happen in order and assigned them to days of the week. It would appear that I have a little more than 30 bits to go. I think my bits need to start getting…bitty-er.
So blah blah, isn’t that the most exciting update ever?