Dance? Take three steps back, one step forward.

Yesterday, I cut 1,400 words out of Chapter 35 of my novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. Today I wrote 500 new ones to replace the scene that didn't work. The old had enough conflict, but it just didn't serve to point the story to its end. The chapter now looks like a mess, but I'm pulling it together.

I realized just tonight one problem I might be having is that I still proceed as though the my attention deficit is still a problem. That is, I check, and check again on what I'm doing, on what I've done. I anticipate forgetting or screwing up. This is unnecessary. I don't have to poke along and checking and double checking. I'm going to try to remember that at all times, and maybe I can build my confidence with it, and break some of these habits.

The difference Strattera makes in my life is significant. I really wish it were diagnosed and treated in childhood because recognizing, diagnosing and treating it in adulthood has taken decades, and it was disguised by other problems.

Today, I had a eureka moment and figured out how I get the characters from where they are to where they have to be through four feet of snow? I was stuck on that for a long time. I had already written scenes that hid the continuity error.

I can never count on when I'm going to have the answers to a challenge a chapter gives me. Moreover, it seems no matter how well I have it outlined, there's always something I didn't foresee, something I didn't count on.

I've never known how some writers do detailed outlines. I'll try it with Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method on my next novel. (In fact, I've adapted it for short story and I'm using it currently.) I tried it for the last for chapters of The Feral Bond, with some success. What it really does is give you more confidence, but I still ran into the problem that I can't see some important details until I have other details created, which means, doing it on the fly when I'm writing it.

Though I've heard of writers who are productive machines at it (Asimov, King) but they also had years of obsessive practice before they were known, and Asimov apparently was an Asperger's Savant, and they're in a league all their own.

No, I have an average mind, I'm under-practiced, under-trained, and I have to compensate with hard work.