I’ve finished the outline of the existing content. It ending up not being quite what I expected. My original draft was arranged in 18 chapters and my outline organized things differently, taking it to 30 chapters. The most glaring problem I noticed was my lack of chapter coherency. There would be numerous settings and character POVs in one chapter and I found myself becoming confused by the influx of information. I felt that by restructuring it to limit the variety of information given within a chapter would improve the flow.
Also, I have a new idea for a meta-narrative within the context of the story. I don’t want to talk about it yet. Not until I do a little more research and determine a timeline. Once that is taken care of I will revisit the outline and plan the second half of the novel. I’m not sure if I will outline it first or jump right into the writing. Both methods have worked for me in the past.
My next step is more research and create a timeline of events. The writing will have to take a short hiatus to make sure things will fit in place. I think the research and timeline is important to do now so that later the writing will come easy and fall into place. I can always hope.
What are your thoughts on outline, research, or timelines?
Cultivating Creativity 
As a writer, I sympathies with you about needing more time. Sometimes I’ll give myself a week to get out a draft of an article out but many times this never happens. It’s usually because I reckon my writing is incoherent (as in your case) and also because “I’m not feeling” what I’ve come up with so far. There are always bursts of inspiration though, that always speeds things up. Good luck and looking forward to see what you write 🙂
Thank you Mabel. This project is quickly becoming much larger than I expected. I made my goal but now I think my long term plan needs to be extended.
As far as inspiration goes. That’s a tricky word. Inspiration is wonderful but it is so rare I would accomplish nothing. Sometimes we just gotta grind through and let the sweat a blood pouring out of us do the work. Or something like that. Always great to hear from you. Are you working on any projects at the moment?
Inspiration. Yeah. It doesn’t come by very often and if we sit and wait around we might never get anything done. So it’s definitely good that we grind it out, though I prefer to call it “go for it!” and don’t look back as it’s more positive. Anything can come out of trying 🙂
I’m always writing and working on writing projects. It’s more analytical and reporting stuff that I don’t share on the blog, though I do on my Facebook and Portfolio Pages. Lots on my plate at the moment, interesting to see how this all pans out. Chat soon, Matt 🙂