I am not linear.
So, outlines, at the beginning, don't help. Once I have enough fragments of the movie in my mind closed-captioned onto pages, I can then outline the things that must connect them, figure out what order those fragments actually go in, as well as what order is best to present them to the reader--which may be very different.
I am still new at the entire process; having worn out dozens of keyboards in the process of decades of technical writing (mostly in the form of assistance to others), but not *stories*, other than when I was back in grade school-ish, long long ago.
My worst problem is geometrical: Tangents.
My mind--perhaps it is an autistic trait--goes along many many parallel, simultaneous paths, each often interconnected with the others in some way. Realtime meatspace is very difficult for me because I am already processing all of that, and in order to find the thoughts i have I must sort thru that and pick out words I need while trying to track what someone is saying (made even more difficult by severe tinnitus).
Tangents. There's one, up there. But it tells you something about why, so it stays.
That happens in the stories, too. But in those, since they aren't realtime, I can move tangents anywhere. Mostly. Many of them simply go into my copious notes files, where I work out details of the world, mechanics, technology, culture, language, etc.
Sometimes they are parts of the story, and it becomes harder to place them. They may be parallel events, and those, those I can interweave scenes to create. They may simply be separate storylines or character moments. Some I find are best left out, which is sometimes physically painful to do.
Another tangent: I find I care for (or despise!) these people in my mind, as if they were real. In many cases, as much or more than I do the real ones I deal with every day in 'dane life. I find myself in tears when one of them is hurt--depressed for days when one dies. But the story is not what I decide it is--it is already there, I am just watching it through a wide, usually well-lit window upon the world it happens in. Vividly these people enact the scenes I must transcribe, must watch over and over to catch every detail and find out which ones are those important enough to show the scene to someone else.
Tangent: Finding just those details needed to show the scene...is quite a task. My desire is to detail it beyond the level of LOTR. I want to show the entire world I've built, but the reader doesn't need. Not while the movie is running. So...I am performing something like verbal calligraphy, something like a Japanese minimalist art style Sumi-e (which has many variants, but...I could not find a specific image I could link here that shows what I mean). Stylizing with minimal brushstrokes to suggest the backdrop; trust the reader to build what they need to see the important part. To see what happens well enough to follow everything that is going on without interfering with their envisionment. Much more complete artwork where detail is needed. Where it matters, or where there is time.
It took me a few weeks to find this style; I'm still refining it. I may always be doing that. But the best stories I remember reading were usually like this. Some were very detailed everywhere. That works great when the story is not full of action. But it often gets in the way when stuff is happening. And...sometimes, it just doesn't matter what color the walls are. If there are buttons, toggle switches, or touchscreens. If the rocket flame is blue, or invisible.
When it does matter, sometimes it doesn't require a description. It can be just a word.
Needler.
Habring.
Arcees.
Oniel.
Rock, Hailstone, Gravelpile, Coal, Pookah.
We've all seen and read enough to know what most of those are even without sentences around them for context. To see something when we read the words. And seeing those, to see a world behind each one, the other things implied by them. Heinlein was a master of that kind of thing.
I also use a lot of de-onymizaic acid in my prose. So you might mistakenly expect capitalization in places it doesn't exist.
My stories won't be for everyone. But for those that want to imagine a world in the spaces between the words, well, they'll like these.
Even though y'all said long posts are welcome, I don't want to overstay mine in this post, so if it is alright, I'll leave you with this image from very early in Drywater, Mars book one:
***
The alpaca rolled darkly through the heavy Martian night.
Inside, the dim cabin was lit mostly by the faint glow of the locked-out driver's console reflecting from under a wolf watching the world roll by.
The sky was crowded with so many crisp stars, sei could just reach up and snag a mouthful and none would even be missed.
The gauzy glints of the Icering littered the southern sky, cleanly bitten off behind the 'paca by the hungry shadow of Mars.
A ways above the broken line ahead where the stars were eaten by the shapes of rocks, Jupiter's glare fiercely dominated the sky. Three bright gnats clustered tight around it, just visible if sei made Jupiter blink by poking it with a claw.
The whisper of the wheel-leaves across the frozen dust spoke only to Thor. The occasional shiver of a rougher patch snuck through the suspension.
Thor had been pressed to the forward window since they'd cleared the field, paws braced on the inactive console to let sei shove seis nose right up there and get the biggest view.
Not yet annoyingly, “Can Sei drive?” Thor asked again.
Not looking up from the pad he wasn't actually reading, Ruan answered, “Nope,” the smirk almost audible in his voice.
The unevenly-rhythmic swish of tail against the seatback and deck announced Thor's thoughts on that.
More focused on the approaching dim landscape than that vanishing beneath the window, sei wheedled, “Sei wouldn’t go fast.”
Unseen in the darkness—even if Thor had been looking—Ruan grinned at imagining an okami chasing shadows using a paca. Unsuccessfully keeping it out of his voice: “I'm sure sei wouldn't.”
Still more as distraction than intent, “Sei know how to not go fast."
A noise that might nearly have been a sneeze came from Ruan's pad-lit figure in the dark behind Thor, ending that round.
For a while, there was only the whisper of the wheels, shiver of the deck, as Jupiter continued to rise.
***
I have parts of the beginning and end and some notes for pieces of the middle on TFD. 
Really, I should just tape a note to my laptop to remind myself of this constant problem with my process...
