I don't want to do it but here it is so grumble grumble.

Like almost everyone else, the section on outlines (Chapter VI) is pretty fascinating. I feel like the author is kind of pulling a Bob Knight (reference) on us, but at this level of writing (and really, after dropping 160k on a college education) it makes so sense not to outline a paper. He makes a good point though, the ETR is probably the main reason that I left that b.s. in high school.

Writing a story without an outline is like making a sandwich without the bread. It's missing something. My SIP is due this Friday and having looked through the edits my adviser compiled, I was embarrassed about how six months of thinking translated into words on a page. I wrote without an outline, and even though I knew what I wanted to convey to people and even though I wrote everything in small sections, running through it is like watching two groups of people laying a train track from opposite directions and ending up fifty feet to the right or left of the other group. I know about Fanon, I (think I) know about the political situation in Egypt, and I know what I think should be done to fix it. Almost 30 pages of zig zagging railways later, none of that was evident, and my Transcontinental Railroad looked like a poorly built roller coaster in some 13 year-old's Roller Coaster Tycoon game.

But, as our hero Jon Franklin states, "writing also involves the processing and integration of large masses of individually trivial bits of data. If you begin your story without knowing precisely where you're going [see here and and here] any mistakes you make at first, any small omissions, take on added significance as you proceed. As length grows linearly, complexity expands exponentially" (113). I wish I would have read this before writing my SIP.

And now, finally, I will try to write my next paper with an outline, one that is like those frozen drink mix cans that you buy in the grocery [you should really get this one but here it is anyways]. A little work goes a long way. I mean you can make like a gallon of juice out of that little can! I can write 30 pages from an equally impressively short and sweet outline. I think.