Plotting woes

I had a mostly productive week. Not a ton of writing time, but the time I did put in was pretty productive. Until today. I worked for 3 hours and barely managed to make notes on 10 or so scenes. Although I did end up cutting an entire subplot and character, which I think was a good decision for the overall story line.

I wasn't expecting the plotting to be this difficult. I thought it would be the writing that would be hard. But at this point, it feels like the writing will be a breeze! There are so many decisions to make -- how do I know which ones are the right or best ones for the story?

I think part of my problem is that I'm trying to do too much too soon. Instead of just making quick notes like "X has dinner with Y" and "X talks to Z about crime scene", I'm making really detailed scene notes, sometimes even including dialogue. But since I don't know where the plot is going yet, I'm not necessarily ready for that level of detail.

I read a great series of articles on Kelley Armstrong's discussion board (apparently I can't link to it directly, but it's under the NaNoWriMo discussion thread) where she talks about her method of outlining. She stresses the importance of not going into too much detail early on in the plotting process so that you don't feel bad about changing the story line around or throwing out scene ideas that don't work, the idea being the more you've invested in the scene, the more reluctant you'll be to scrap it.

I'm tapped out for today. I'll start again tomorrow, trying for a more bare bones approach to just get the basics out.