I've never been good about outlining things. Back in school, when they taught me how to do outlines with roman numerals and letters and arabic numerals, with all the points arranged neatly and hierarchically, I quickly saw how to do it and as quickly decided it was a waste of time. If I knew what I was going to write, I thought, why not just write it?

By the time I was in high school, and even more so in college, I had perfected a system for writing long papers: I'd do my research, taking note...