I've noticed that I oftentimes face a pause, or a slowing-down, when I finish the first act of a work-in-progress

I'm up to 30k words on this book. I've been doing this thing for the past year where I write an outline for the book and then delete it. Having an outline means I know what I'm aiming at. But deleting it means I'm free to deviate from it whenever I want. This book is much less structured than any other book I've ever written, so the organization of deta…