Honestly... you and me both LOL. I might've mentioned this before but my writing process is generally quite all over the place. I would say I write by coming up with scenes & bits of dialogue first and rarely ever think things through in chronological order, so my drafts generally look like a bunch of various different scenes that I jump back and forth between and, in the end, try to tie together in a cohesive way. I would not generally advise this.

But for multi-chaptered fics, I am actually working on a few right now that I'd like to finish this year and I've found that outlining really does help (surprise surprise). And outlining can look different for everyone, for me it just means I'll jot down a general idea or a dialogue or a feeling that will be expressed like "character says this here" or "i'll use this phrase/feeling here" because I find that if I outline every event down to a T, it takes out some of the spontaneity for me and I personally really enjoy the creative mystery of what can end up happening when I dive into writing a scene. I hope that makes sense? Different things work for different people. But I realized I'm not a very structured writer, so I just try and let myself lean into my strengths instead of forcing myself to write in a way that I think is "right."

Also, I'm a huge music person so mood based playlists help me SO much in writing scenes. I am always listening to music when writing. And, if I'm struggling with a scene, I find that just writing the dialogue for it can be helpful and I can go back later and build off of that or maybe I'll realize, I don't want to include that scene at all. Thanks for asking and good luck with your own writing!! <3