Why novel writing is such fun.

Some people who write novels plot them out in intricatre detail, a story board like a comic book or movie, scene by scene. I think that's boring, for it's like paint by the numbers. It's all laid out with no ssupence for the author.
Some of my novels, eg. "The Mystery Club Solves a Murder" and "Ben Zakkai's Coffoin" and "Murder in the Keweenaw" began as dreams. The dream provided the situation and in order to find out what happened next I have to write it. (I woke up too soon to reach the climax of the dream/story). Each scene in a long story begins with a situation. Something happens, and that sets up a new situation. This page-turner structure is a bit like the old Perils of Pauline serial in the movies. I guess I learned how to do it with with an old pen pal. He would write a chapter and end with a cliff hanger, then hand it back to me for the solution and I had to make it a genre story of his choice and use a specific word. Later I had a radio show where I took three words on the air and made up a story for the radio listeners, using those three words.
So I start with a situation. I try to write a complete scene every morning when I sit down to write. This may be 800-1000 words, a good chunk of writing for a single session.. But when I complete that scene I may not know what comes next and to find out, I have to return to the project the next morning to see what happens next. It's like experiencing my own soap opera. And it is huge fun. My rhythm for this generally runs about 55,000 to 60,000 words, perfect length for ereaders. That's how I wrote "White Slave." The situation: Ed Sutherland fell overboard from the yacht Miss Chief at the end of "The Mystery Club Solves a Murder." So what if he didn't drown? I had to write the book to find out what happened to him and how he survived. Fun fun fun. I set the book up for the Kindle at only 99 cents as a loss leader introducgtion to my other work.