Writing a book is all about your creativity and planning. If you have planned well then soon your creativity will lead you to finish your book within your time frame or it helps you not go away from your story or plot of your book.
It is very important to first make an outline of your book. Indeed there is no fixed or a correct way to outline your book but by doing so you always stay focused on where your book is headed to and you never stray away from the plot.
I mostly write one or two lines so I can remember which chapter deals with which topic so if I get any new idea in my mind then I know exactly where I can place it.
Each line is like a folder and scattering my ideas into different folders helps me in arranging my ideas.
At some point, we all must depend on some research work and at that time it helps to know exactly where these researches can be placed.
Outlining is the best way to keep track of your work.
If your mind suddenly finds anything interesting for your book and you need to change and add something new, then at that time these outlines help you in advance to see that one single change can affect this many chapters.
Suppose I want to add a fresh chapter in the middle of my book. But sometimes it needs an introduction in the beginning then the outline helps you to know exactly where to add the introduction.
It often happens to me that I first image my whole book and then gradually start breaking my ideas into smaller chapters and then I feel to introduce some new characters and then sometimes my assumed end of the book gets filtered by new ideas and it also alters. During this time my outline definitely helps me a lot.
Once I decide that I am working on a new book then my mind is always busy. In fact the brain faculty of reticular activating system (RAS) is working on it. RAS is a very important part of brain that works on areas where we are not consciously focused like our breathing, sleeping, waking and beating of our heart. It is basically the part of the brain that works when we aren’t. So my RAS plays a very vital role in writing.
The Mind maps the whole book and then it is very easy to outline the book and then work according to it.
Once you have made the outline then you can easily see where different parts are headed to and getting connected to one another, and get a sense of how it all fits together. If this picture is clear then life is definitely easier.