Everybody's got to have a plan...right?

Outlining.
How many of you actually do it before you sit down to write that very first sentence of the very first paragraph of the very first page? What about later on after the first whirlwind session? Don't feel uncomfortable. I don't do it either. Of course I've heard the spiel from about every English teacher, science teacher, and countless publishers and authors. Outlining is very important. Outlining is the crucial backbone of a good story. I don't know about you but I hate outlining. Absolutely despise it. Maybe it has to do with those same teachers. I remember having to do countless outlines for school. It was all usually useless busy work, especially when you happened to have a substitute teacher. They didn't even try to hide that it was busy work.
I hate outlining.
But I love writing. Always have, probably always will. It's hard to make myself mix together something that I hate and something that I love. Part of me pulls one way and part of me tugs the other.
So the whole time I've been writing I've very rarely created a real outline. Mostly because I don't think I need one. For the most part the story is pretty well fleshed out in my head. What good is it really going to do to write down something that I've already decided on. The closest thing to an outline I've done was to write down Shaun's age and then the major event that I expected to occur during that time. It was very bare bones. Nothing compared with the way They want you to outline.
The new book however that I've been working on though is different. I've had to do a lot more research for this one. For starters Dark Divinity is set in present time and present day America. Everything else I've ever written was set in the past in mostly fictionalized areas. I'm intent on using real places as anchors for this story and I've found myself having to do quite a bit more planning than usual to get it to all pull together. And sometimes I'm still at a loss for what comes next. For this series I think an outline might actually come in handy. Yet other than the barebones type of outline I'm used to I can't seem to make myself do a real outline.
It doesn't mean that I don't have a plan. Oh I've got a plan, I've got more plans than I know what to do with most of the time. But I don't have an outline, unless you count the one in my head. And that's the only one I really need, because its more detailed, more vibrant, and more real than any pen and paper outline could ever really be. And if that outline isn't enough I seriously doubt a written one is gonna do me any good.