Week 7 Response

Walt Harrington’s “How I Get to the Point” stood out to me from the reading as it addressed the topic of outline further. Since constructing our dynamic outlines I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the process. I favored the dynamic outline to the traditional outline, but even so, I’ve been resisting the idea some. I find it to be very helpful in helping to maintain focus, especially later in a piece, but it still feels somewhat mechanical to me. An idea from Harrington struck me though, 

“After writing the first three hundred or so words of an eight-thousand-word piece, I stopped writing, and at that late stage, with the project clearly centered, I finally jotted down an outline of the entire piece.” 

This is interesting because at this point, your piece would already have a sort of foundation. You are grounded somewhere. Having centered yourself and begun to tackle the piece, you can become filled with ideas. For me, as I write, more things come to mind or I realize something isn’t working, so I change it; however, from the beginning I am preparing my plan for the piece within my head. An early post-beginning outline could be very beneficial to me in helping to keep my thoughts organized as I go. I think that this is something I may try to do in the future. The benefits of an outline are clear to me, but finding the exact right process for it is something I still need to achieve.