CC - you and I have spoken on this issue before, so I'll be brief (I have to go workout. Really. Must workout. Those last 10 pounds MUST GO!)
But....
I don't outline, I have a vague idea of events and direction, but I write on the fly.
My characters are ALWAYS doing this to me - saying things I hadn't intended them to say.
I even wrote this chapter for LST where the 2 of them attempt intimacy and it's all hard and awkward and scary... full of misunderstanding.
But by the time they even contemplated getting closer, they had broken down so many barriers between them that the chapter wouldn't make any sense.
I loved this chapter, and I had to mostly axe it.
But it's like that with software. We call it refactoring - rewriting our code underneat (keeping the outward functionality intact) to make it better. Software writing is incremental and iterative. But writing stories... it's visceral.
I wouldn't have it any other way. I personally love how my story writes itself, how the ideas just come as I contemplate... and sometimes it takes months... but the ideas always come.
