Panic Attack!!

In the past one year alone, I think I have read at least a hundred books and essays on writing...if not more. From Robert Olen Butler to John Gardner and everything in between, I have devoured with a doggedness that has left me breathless and panting. Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" and Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" have filled me with hope but the Grand Summit still eludes me. Like the Mount Everest, it sits 29,000 feet above me swathed in plumes of ice. Five false starts, 40,000 words, four chapters rewritten five times over, I have not made the progress I had in mind. Being a creative professional, I am used to tackling a design problem on the running, pin it down and wrestle out a solution, five presentation sheets, plan, section, elevation plus views, bam bam bam, everything printed out while the clock is still ticking. So this is driving me to utter despair. I never spent so much time listening to the clock tick away in its corner in my entire life. Yesterday, I came across a piece of advice: write an outline for every chapter. Is that how its really done? Will it ever get done?