Breaking into chunks is the only way I can write anything. After all, it's easy to sit down and say that I'm going to write this scene today, or these pages. It's a lot harder to sit down and say I'm going to write a 500-page novel.

I haven't read Westfahl's article, although I've read other stuff he's written. Is ths article on the web, by any chance?

I almost always plot beforehand. Especially with a longer work. For the current novel, I wrote a 12-page outline and then another 12-page stepsheet. What I have found, though, is that as I write the book, I veer away from the outline somewhat. However, the spine of the story is still the same. I know who my protagonist is and how she changes by the end of the book. It's just that some of the details may differ from what I had originally imagined.