Has It Really Been a Semester?

Long time guys!

I can't believe my last "real" post was back in July!!  Wow.  Sorry about that.  This last semester of school kept me pretty busy and next semester (my last semester) will be even worse!  But, I'm almost done so that is good!

In other news...

It's that time of year again!  Yes, the time of year when it's cold outside and my creative brain starts thinking.  I have had an itch to work on my Destroyer Series for the last couple of weeks.  And now I'm finally getting back into it.

You know what the biggest problem about working on a story only once a year?  You sometimes forget all the different directions your story is taking.  I know it sounds absurd, but when you have a story that is spanning three (to four) books, the story lines easily become one.  I was looking over my mountain of notes and written scenes earlier tonight, and I'll be honest, it's rather overwhelming.  This story (the "Destroyer" story) has been with me now FIVE years.  You would have thought I could have had it written and done.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) every time I work on it, new things come to pass and cause changes within the story, giving it more depth, more meaning.  I absolutely love it!  But I really want to get it written so I have it preserved for years to come, you know?  As of right now, my "story" consists within the pages of five notebooks, multiple sticky-note collections, some Word documents, and iPod playlist of songs, and random scenes written on scraps of paper.  NONE of it is in order.  So even if I fill four entire notebooks with just Destroyer stuff, it is never in order.  I may have been writing a scene from Book 1 and it suddenly sparks an idea for Book 3 that I want to connect.  So I go off of the creative tangent and everything falls out of order.

Have I attempted to organize and condense my thoughts?  Yes.

Have I tried to write out the general outline of each book?  Absolutely.

Does the outline change?  All the time.

Which is the problem.

My original story idea from the beginning of 2009 is soooooooo different from what it is now.  It's as though the story has grown as I have.

Does anyone have recommendations for organizing ideas and stories into a concise outline?  I am reading about story structure and I've thought about using that as an outline, but I'm interested in what others do for outlining their story--whether it's an actual written outline, or if they use index cards (which I have attempted and it's just as chaotic as my writings), or if there's another method that works even better?  I am open to suggestions!  Thanks!

With that, I'm off to find more inspiration to work on my story.

Peace!