Another Learning Experience?

After all my great words yesterday, I went home to see about plotting for The Masque and got really frustrated when the plot just wouldn't come. Frustration on the "I'll never be a successful writer" level. Just hours after I was all patient with getting published. Maybe I should start looking into bipolar disorders....

It took an hour, but I eventually realized that everything was OK. The plot would come to me, I'll write this book, I'll learn from it. I guess I was just super excited with the new writing software I'm trying out and with the new characterization method I sampled (tarot cards). I got quite a few ideas about the plot from the character readings, but they were vague. I tried to make them specific last night by sketching a storyboard on the software. I got very frustrated very fast. I should've expected it, really. I'm not good at pre-planning. I'm trying to con my muse out of this. Extensive revisions are difficult and make it hard to catch some of the subtler problems that need fixing. The more details about plot and characters that I know as I write the first draft, the less work I have in revisions. I'm already light years ahead of myself in the character department compared to Human Dignity. But the vague plot issues are bugging me.

I need to just get over it and keep plugging forward, sketching plot outlines and such as it comes to me and keeping it all organized so that way revisions are as easy as possible. And maybe by the time I'm ready to start the next book, I'll have learned enough about myself, my muse, and my writing process to help me have more than a vague idea about what's going to happen in that book when I'm writing it.