Yes, rewriting is crucial.

How clearly defined is your idea before you start writing? Without knowing anything about your writing, it sounds like you're trying to hit a moving target.

An outline, a complete outline, is like a road map. If you start by saying it would be great to head west, it's very easy to end up somewhere you don't want to be -- even you end up somewhere west of where you started. And rewriting could be difficult and fruitless -- what you end up doing to starting over and heading out again just hoping you come up with a something you like. It's may be easier than starting from scratch, but whether you get where you want to go may still be a crapshoot.

But if you say you're going to San Francisco from, say, D.C., and plot which roads you will take, it will be easy to stay on course. It would be harder to get lost, and if you get off track it would be easier to make corrections.

As far as how to outline, well, don't get caught up in any formal structures. There are as many ways to outline as there are writers. But as some noted writer once put it, everybody outlines -- some just call it the first draft.

RED
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