But I have writer friends who make, no kidding, color-coded charts, notecards, chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene outlines, character worksheets, the whole nine.

::shudders::

I had to plan my next chapter since it involves a heist. I needed to know where everything is. Then, I needed to make the character's plan. Then, I needed to figure out everything that goes wrong. Finally, I had to figure out how they get out of it. I have diagrams.

The previous couple of chapters, no outline at all. Just a destination point.

In battle scenes and such, I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the parties and where they have to be when.

I'm too LD for that, but that's why one action sequence has made me all "Are we *really*, truly, sure about the writer thing? Because I'm sure you could find something else..." And I was about to, too, but "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in." But this is the closest I've ever come to walking away. So to speak. But, you know, I admit it. I still want to write the next Big Fat Greek Bitch(/Ari) and get paid. Or something like that.(Although it's sad that that was in the first Entourage I ever saw back in'04 and I forgot about it, thereby forgetting why I think of one of my favorite '00s rom coms as My Big Fat Greek Bitch. Sorry, Ms. Vardalos...it's nothing personal.)

I got in about 1000 words on chapter 8 last night. If I get even a little bit of writing time tonight I should go over 50,000 words. About 1/4 of the way there now.

1000 words in I can see that chapter 8 will probably actually be 8 and 9. There's just too many things to stuff in there and I expect to go through a lot of words doing the heist.

A paltry 600 words or so last night. But I didn't have much time to work on it, about 50 minutes. I thought of some good tweaks while commuting though. A scene I decided to cut due to irrelevance I'm going to put back in and it will be quite relevant.

About 1200 words last night. I'm hoping to finish off the 8th chapter this weekend and maybe get a good start on the 9th. I got in my scene that will foreshadow something that will happen at the very end of the story. Tonight maybe I will get in a brand new scene I thought up that will add a little more action to chapter 8 and a bit of insight into a character that hasn't been really well developed yet. I'm feeling good about 8 so far.

Chapter 8 is done. My wife very nicely gave me some writing time so I got around 2400 words last night.

I finished chapter 9 this morning before everybody got going, but it is a short chapter. The chapter is only about 3,600 words. All together I'm standing at about 58,000 words now.