Do you outline the whole book in advance? â€� David David Katzman Q&A

Moo asked David David Katzman:

Do you outline the whole book in advance?

David David Katzman Hi Moo. Thanks for asking. No, I did not outline the book in advance, it developed organically and then refined through many revisions. I wrote the raw material of the story, the scenes and characters, over the course of about 4 years in dozens of notebooks. During that time, I was allowing myself to visualize scenes rather than plotting them out. And I was inspired by tone and style and setting rather than a script. And I was also inspired by art. After about 4 years of writing, I suspect because I was allowing my subconscious mind to generate much of the material, I actually could see the entire story from beginning to end assemble in my head. The beginning and end and most of the major shifts in the plot were all there. At that point, I transferred everything to the computer and began editing, which took another three years. I went through 14 full manuscript versions, each time making new discoveries and connections, adjusting scenes, moving scenes and tightening and tightening the story until in my final edits I was focused only on sentences and words and so on. Started on the illustrations about six months before I was done. The entire concept and material was driven by my subconscious imagination and "trance writing," but then my rational mind did significant editing and revising.

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