Assistance in organizing thoughts for an outline?

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Zodai
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12 May 2021, 9:40 pm

I'm an aspie writer who currently works on collaborative/group projects, on that front I feel like I'm moderately successful, though as of now it's only freeware releases.

But I feel as though when I'm trying to get something done on my own, I have difficulty sorting out my own thoughts. I'll get a good beginning going, but then quickly get tangled up in where my mind is going and my momentum stops.

I've noticed from my group work I seem to work better with an outline - but, trying to make one on my own leads to the same difficulty in actually creating the outline to pull from. I have great difficulty in organizing my thoughts on my own, while I'm good at making progress when I have someone to talk about things with and bounce my ideas off of, my brain gets clogged when I try to do so on my own.

Does anyone have experience with this, and does anyone have possible solutions that might help? Thank you!


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traven
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16 May 2021, 1:50 am

i have no advice, maybe finding your own way, that works for you
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DuckHairback
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21 May 2021, 6:21 am

I think finding a way of working is very personal. I don't know how much good any advice would be.

My ability to actually get work done was greatly improved when I started using Scrivener (paid software) to organise my writing. Breaking the work down into small parts really helped me.

I too often start and then get in a mess. This usually happens to me becasue while I know what happens at the start and I have a good idea of the destination, I'm not clear on how to get there. What I do now is write the start and then skip to the next bit where I definitely know what's going on. I do that until I've written all the bits that I know. Then I go back and fill in the bits where I wasn't sure - by writing the bits I know I find it clears headspace for the bits I haven't worked up yet, and often the way to get to the bits I have already written becomes clearer. I had a weird idea I had to write my stories chronologically - as soon as I abandoned this, I got more productive.


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