The toughest part of writing is starting, staring at the blank page, trying to remember all your brilliant ideas. You had so many of them last night, during your kid’s piano recital… and again, during that totally unproductive meeting at work… but now… now.. Where have all the ideas gone?

This is the relationship between ideas and blank papers/screens. It could revolutionize your writing productivity to know this: an idea and a blank screen/paper have a blood-enemy relationship. They hate each other. Really.

I have it on good authority from both the ideas and the blank screens I’ve encountered. Where one goes, the other shall not.

Thus, the outline.

The outline is the peace maker, the treaty writer, the mediator. The outline is the Ambassador who negotiates a healthy working relationship between the two sworn enemy territories. The outline is your right-hand man, and you need to give him more credit, not to mention more opportunity to do his thing so you have to spend less time negotiating between Idea and Blankness.

Outlines eliminate the pressure of, “Hey, be clever NOW!”

You get a frame work. And guess what? Ideas love, adore, live for the framework. A framework, to a new idea, is like a playground. It gets to climb all over it, go down the slides, try out the monkey bars. It’s fun. It’s invigorating. It gives an Idea something to do.

My method for outlines is simple.

• First comes the idea or the assignment, the topic or the title. It might appear in a dream or a vision or an email from my editor. Whatever. It’s something that needs to be written.

• I have a folder that I keep stocked with blank sheets of paper; yes, I know, Ideas hate Blank Paper but Outlines happen to love them. So. I don’t sit down to write about my idea. I sit down with my blank sheet of paper to just jot down a quick outline. Easy as pie. No pressure. I am really informal about this.

• The outline goes back in the folder and the title goes on my editorial calendar for the appropriate day when it needs to be published. (This is an extraneous step, by the way; if you don’t work with an editorial calendar, just skip that thought and go to the writing part. I like the calendar, as it helps keep me on track with not only my blogs but the work I do for clients. But more on that some other time.)

• When it’s writing time, I open the folder, pull out my outline, and get to work. I’ll read through the outline to refresh myself on my thoughts, then I just go to drafting. Usually this is not difficult because I already have several main points in the outline, and I can just dive in and start writing about any one of them. If I’m having trouble, I’ll force myself to write at top-speed (more on how I do some other time, too) to just get the words flowing. Editing comes later.

I find that my best work comes when I have a block of writing time (1 1/2 – 3 hours) and a stack of outlines. The first one might take me a little while, but then I start flipping through those outlines, writing those pieces, and moving through that stack quickly and effortlessly. It’s fun. Of course, the writing needs to be edited, but that’s fun too, when the pressure is off and you know you’ve just been ultra-productive.

So: have you ever used an outline? Will you now?

Reminder: An outline is just a rough sketch of your ideas; you’re not tied to it. You don’t need to get all formal with it. Roman Numerals and subheadings are not required, unless those just give you a thrill. Focus on getting a basic skeleton down and remember you’ll have plenty of time later (when drafting and when editing) to rearrange the elements.