[mbforbes]

For me, this approach works great with one enormous exception: I must already know exactly what I'm going to write about.

I have tried outlining my writing countless times. But inevitably, the real work of thinking meticulously comes with the writing itself. In composing prose at the finest level of detail, I discover the true shape of the topic through its nuance.

I always throw out my outlines, no matter how many times I have iterated on them. My high level thinking couldn't sufficiently understand the topic.

PG expressed this well: writing is thinking, at least for some of us.

[passion__desire]

This is classic. Just move up and down the ladder of abstraction or a tree, collapse a node if its children are ok. If not, expand, fix issues, collapse it and move to another node in the tree or graph.

https://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/