Outlining Blockage

I haven't been writing much lately. This is something that occurred to me at the beginning of the week, and has been playing on and off in my thoughts since then. I had even planned on writing a story, well, stories really, there's two of them. And also, they are already at least partially written, so I guess it would be more appropriate to say that I was going to type them. Anyway, I had two short stories that I was planning on working on, as a way of "priming the pump", so to speak. I still have not done so, even though I thought of the idea sometime on Tuesday (or was it Monday?), and it is now late Thursday (it will be early Friday before long). Therein lies the heart of the problem.

I guess that what I'm going through falls under the umbrella term of "writer's block", though I don't feel blocked exactly. The story that I was thinking of is in my head, and for the most part I have it planned out in its entirety. There's still the ironing out of details, and making the tough call to cut out that one scene that sounds great in my head and on its own, but wouldn't fit within the context of the story. I like the dialogue it uses, but it would just end up screwing up the flow of actions that precede and follow it.

When I write a story, I like to write out things by hand first. This way I have a copy that I won't lose due to a computer malfunction, or a too-close-magnet. Also, I am free to write notes in the margins, draw arrows to point out things to myself at a later time, and just let the words take control of the page, settling down where they will, something you can't do on a virtual document (at least, not without some major formatting).

From there, I organize things into an outline. A series of events that happen within the story; characters speak, locations are visited, and actions are made. The outline is typed out on a computer, and expanded upon; what may have once been a sentence or two is turned into a paragraph. It's the outline that I am getting hung up on.

It's not that I can't write the outline, it's that I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't have the emotional or physical motivation or energy to carry it out. I tend to forget about it altogether, until it is too late to act upon my thoughts. I tried working on it before, but the end result is hardly a proper outline. What I do have, at best, could be called a rough draft of an outline.

I feel drained just writing a blog post.