Discovery Writing.

Discovery writers go straight to the blank page, no outline, very little or no plan, and pound out their work with the spontaneity of the Red West African Bull Finch.  They figure out their characters, settings, and conflicts as they type. As a result sometimes random things happen or appear in the first draft that really don't belong. Asparagus.

One of the most famous discovery writers is Steven King, which is why his mind is probably more frightening than any of the places that the Ghost Hunters have ever visited, including that Winchester place with all those windows and doors.

Discovery writing has definite perks.  For example, if you are a discovery writer, you probably skipped the very first post.  Discovery writers often discover things that an outliner might miss, and they often find it easier to adapt to sudden problems uncovered in the draft.

The problem with discovery writing is that it increases ones risk for developing Eternal Restart Syndrome. In the beginning chapters, the discovery writer has thousands of options and can take the work in just about any direction. This is great, but by at least the halfway point, that freedom starts to disappear as more and more promises are made to the reader.

The experienced discovery writer can tell you how to handle this, and Brandon Sanderson can teach the discovery writer how to outline, or possibly just gain a renewed interest in salt depending.

The inexperienced discovery writer can tell you, however, that they really just deal with this loss of freedom by writing themselves into a dead end, and then just throwing something off back into the story to try and regain that freedom. Which is quite effective as well. For example if you were writing a historical novel set in 1732 and all of your characters fell into a well, you might escape this situation by writing "It then rained gorillas from the sky, and they began eating people, until everyone in the entire world was dead. Luckily, Sherlock Holmes survived."  This will not work as well if you plan on publishing this, or want a remotely cohesive story, but otherwise works perfectly, and is recommended by Wikipedia.

If you do not feel that you have enough experience to write a story about Sherlock Holmes you might try using a buzz word like "assassination," "butlery," "monk" "dying" or "puppy" to regain interest, even if your story isn't about any of those things this is still possible if you write a sentence like "The situation was dire, but at least Mary's puppy hadn't been assassinated." or "Sally loved baking cakes even more than monks love not dying or having to resort to butlery."

If anyone has other suggestions for managing discovery writing. Feel free to write them in the comments.